In the small room off dining room thirty years ago today my father died. He wasn't going to walk down the back stoop another time. Heart, they said. It broke.

Though night after night
The moon is stream-reflected,
Try to find where it has touched,
Point even to a shadow.
- Takuan (1573 - 1645)

The monk Raub's words were read at conversation tonight. Idols are what the false self is never good enough to please. The true Father says it's all right. We are accepted as the Father Itself is accepted.

My father always said "OK" those times of my life when meaning and heartbreak vied for the upper hand. His subtle acceptance accompanied me through.

Right where we are -- that's where we begin, always -- right where we are.

And if someone should erroneously say you're not good enough, do not believe them.

Say, "So what?"

Innocently.

Does a new world near?

Someone at conversation made the distinction between spirituality concerning the absolute versus ordinary deportment in social interaction. I'd rather the distinction be unmade. Spirituality cuts between the absolute and our deportment with one another. Spirituality is how each thing is itself.

Alone in mountain fastness,
Dozing by the window.
No mere talk uncovers Truth:
The fragrance of those garden plums!
- Bankei (1622 - 1693)

Something is itself when it embraces everything within and without it. The spirituality of a person and nation is of a piece. Authentic spirituality remains integral. False piety and religiosity fragments and dissembles.

In today's world it is difficult to find authentic spirituality.

It is a world in which objective fact no longer guides how we are governed. A world in which distortions and untruths are repeated over and over again until just enough Americans believe them to provide a veneer of approval for the outlandish. ("Bush Administration Subverts the Truth," by Marie Cocco. Published on Tuesday, June 21, 2005 by the Long Island, NY Newsday)

We are not "winning" anything in Iraq. Back home we are losing heart.

No mere talk can change lies into truth.

A more integral silence must walk in our midst.

Here in Maine summer solstice rounds out with full moon.

Monks unheard and hermits unseen step unhurried.

Comes near a spirituality as comes near moonlight over all.

We are preparing a subscription letter.

Money is a kind of poetry. (Wallace Stevens)

We invite donations to support the Laura Common and Meetingbrook Harbour Retreat.

Support Meetingbrook?

Come along.

Practice.

These men are not to be trifled with. They are smart. They are cunning. They will sanction murder. They will smile, speak calmly, behave reasonably, and fool the vast majority of lookers on.


The Peace of Wild Things
When despair grows in me
and I wake in the middle of the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting for their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
(Poem by Wendell Berry)

Even if they are the elite of this land, even if they have the power to misdirect, misuse, and mystify a benumbed populace -- they will soon fall hard to a force stronger than justice.

What force?

You know.

Say it.

Samson called on the Lord and cried out, "Lord the Lord, I beg you, remember me; give me strength again this once, and let me be revenged on the Philistines at one blow for my two eyes". And Samson put his arms round the two middle pillars supporting the building, and threw all his weight against them, his right arm against one and his left arm against the other; and he cried out, "May I die with the Philistines!:" He thrust now with all his might, and the building fell on the chiefs and on all the people there. Those he killed at his death outnumbered those he had killed in his life. His brothers and his father's whole family came down and carried him away. They took him up and buried him between Zorah and Eshtaol in the tomb of Manoah his father (Judges 16:27 - 31)

Is that it? Will each one of us have to die for that which is beyond justice?

Ask Jesus. Ask Socrates. Ask John the Baptist. Ask Martin Luther King Jr.

Or, don't ask.

You don't want to know.

Do you?

Downing Street Memo hearing led by Representative John Conyers of Michigan took place in Washington DC today.

Cold Cliff's remoteness is what I love
No one travels this way
Clouds lie around on the peaks
A lone gibbon howls on the ridge
What else do I cherish
It's good to grow old content
Cold and heat change my appearance
The pearl of my mind stays safe
- Han shan

A resolution is introduced by a few in Congress to remove American troops from Iraq.

Something odd is happening. A ripeness? Time for tainted fruit to fall?

Some at the shop insist a reckoning approaches.

I'll settle for the truth.

Faith, whether Buddhist or Christian, means saying "Yes."

Yes is not the same as "whatever." Whatever means a desultory "who cares." Yes means an emphatic "I do."

Believe nothing because a wise man said it.
Believe nothing because it is generally held.
Believe nothing because it is written.
Believe nothing because it is said to be divine
Believe nothing because someone else believes it.
But believe only what you yourself judge to be true.
- The Buddha

At Tuesday Evening Conversation (as at Mass that morning) the reading referenced Jesus' words about turning the other cheek. It is not a popular thought. I think many consider it a sign of weakness and victimhood to behave so oddly.

Here's what Matthew writes:
You have heard that it was said, "An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth." But I say to you, Do not resist one who is evil. But if any one strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also; and if any one would sue you and take your coat, let him have your cloak as well; and if any one forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles.
(Matthew 5.38-41)

It strikes me (no pun intended) there is a more profound consideration for us to ponder in these words, one that drops well into the place that meditative or contemplative mind settles to. This mind seeks and periodically settles upon the still point of the turning world. This still point is root, is absolute center around which everything not immediately there revolves.

At this root-center there is no movement. There is no other, no duality, and no subject-object split. Within this core reality, therefore, there is no right cheek/other cheek, there is no hand to slap an opposite target, and no other person who does the slapping or receives the slap.

I suspect one way of penetrating the words of Jesus in this instance is to enter the stillness offered by zazen (silent sitting) or contemplation (resting in the reality of what is there) -- and becoming Being, or, by being Becoming. The words Being and Becoming have been used as foils against one another since the pre-Socratic Greek philosophers Parmenides and Heraclitus found their preferences in Being and Becoming to explain that "All is static" versus "Everything flows." Thus they captured (or let go on) their thought and experience.

My thought and experience suggests to me that one is the expression of the other. Zen says that the absolute is "not two, not one." Absolute, in Philosophy is found in the dictionary as:
1. Something regarded as the ultimate basis of all thought and being. Used with "the."
2. Something regarded as independent of and unrelated to anything else. Hence, of itself -- or -- in, through, and with itself. In non-dualistic thinking this is a seeming paradox, namely, nothing outside and nothing inside. It defies rational thought to consider something to have no inside and no outside. The contrary viewpoint is equally true, namely, nothing is not inside, nothing is not outside.

At times these words begin to set sight to the wording of God -- namely, God is What-Is-Itself.

But when you pray, go to your inner room, close the door, and pray to your Father in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will repay you.
(Matthew 6:6 NAB)

Repay -- to give you back, to give back you.

The notion curiously comforts: that the Father (or the Mother), that God -- "Who sees in secret," is the hidden, dependably discreet, inward, beyond ordinary understanding, mysterious, and ever-present reality of existence -- the still point and wholeness surrounding each and every one of us; that this God is root reality of who we are.

This God invites a transforming faith that says yes to what is you/me.

But when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face,
so that you may not appear to be fasting, except to your Father who is hidden. And your Father who sees what is hidden will repay you.
(Matthew 6:17-18)

Faith, for me, is yes beyond comprehension. Hope, for me, is hidden wholeness. Love, for me, is death to two, death to one, all arising.

This practice is a kind of fast. It does without the need to to be anything other than what and who I am. All the ideas, beliefs, identities, insults, pretense, falsity, and egoistic narratives that rise up like attractive nuisances are, in fact, unnecessary luxuries without nourishment to this ready assent and readying ascent to authentic life, surrender to wholeness, and loving compassion.

It is a triune way. A way of practice, journey, and dwelling. It is a laura.
laura: \Lau"ra\, n. [LL., fr. Gr. (?) lane, spun thread (defile), also, a kind of monastery.] (R. C. Ch.) A number of hermitages or cells in the same neighborhood occupied by anchorites who were under the same superior. --C. Kingsley. (http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=laura)

We become another experience of what is there.

Laura practice, Laura journey, Laura dwelling!

The Laura Way is a poem.

HAIKU FOR RAINY WEDNESDAY
Poem is prelude to
final line. We are words. Come
play. There is no end.
(wfh)

Yes leads through wholeness to love.

Jizo gently will help. No doubt.

There is suffering in the world.

Children suffer. They suffer hunger. They suffer war. They suffer the difficulties of being unborn and the difficulties of being born. We need inspiration and we need protection for our children. And not only children. All of us.

There is an invitation, therefore, to all of us to help diminish and end suffering. We vow to make safe, as best we can, life, living beings, and those beyond or below the obvious realms of ordinary existence for sentient beings.

Do away with your
Throat and lips,
And let me hear
What you can say.
- Shih-tou (700-790)

Jizo, the bodhisattva, is an inspiration and protector.

JIZO (Jizou, Jizoo)
Sanskrit: Ksitigarbha or Ksitegarbha

Guardian of Souls in Hell
Savior from the Torments of Hell

Master of Six States of Reincarnation
Protector of Children, Expectant Mothers, Firemen, Travelers, and Pilgrims

Protector of Aborted or Miscarried Babies
Guardian of Children Who Die Prematurely


One of the most beloved of all Japanese divinities, Jizo works to ease the suffering and shorten the sentence of those serving time in hell. Jizo can appear in many different forms to alleviate suffering. In modern Japan, Jizo is popularly known as the guardian of unborn, aborted, miscarried, and stillborn babies. At the same time, Jizo serves his customary roles as patron saint of expectant mothers, children, firemen, travelers, pilgrims, and the protector of all beings caught in the six realms of reincarnation.

Jizo is perhaps the most popular deity of the common people, a friend to all, never frightening even to children, and his many manifestations -- often cute and cartoon like in modern Japan -- incorporate attributes from earlier Shinto traditions and Shinto kami. Jizo statues can be found everywhere in Japan, especially in graveyards. Jizo is often translated as "Womb of the Earth," for JI means earth, while ZO means womb. But "ZO" can also be translated with equal correctness as "store house" or "repository of treasure" -- thus Jizo is also translated as "earth store" or "earth treasury."
http://www.onmarkproductions.com/html/jizo1.shtml

We can make vows.

All Buddhist practices involve vows. At the Zen Center we chant the Four Great Bodhisattva Vows every day:

Beings are numberless, I vow to free them.
Desires are inexhaustible, I vow to put an end to them.
Dharma gates are boundless, I vow to enter them.
Buddha's way is unsurpassable, I vow to embody it.

Over the years we have chanted vows like these hundreds, thousands of times. It does not matter if the vows where made when we where half-asleep or if we didn't quite understand them. We have made these promises and now the jig is up, the promissory note is due. This explains the common feeling people have. " I don't know why I practice, I just have to." "Something is compelling me to do this practice." The ongoing vow operates below the conscious mind. It is very important to shape and say our vows. Maezumi Roshi recommended starting each day with vows. There are many possible vows can be a simple. "I vow to do what I can to relieve suffering." "I vow to do what needs to be done to awaken fully, even if I'm afraid at times." "I vow to open my mind and hands and let go of what needs to be dropped for me and others to be free." Vows can be formal and part of a ritual. They can be simple and spontaneous. What is important is to vow. At that point the things that are needed for the vow to be fulfilled begin to flow toward us.

Jizo Bodhisattva is called the King of Vows. When we call upon the power of Jizo we are calling upon the power in each one of us that is always urging us in the direction of fulfilling our life vow or purpose. For all of us the fundamental vow is actually the same, to uncover and embody our innate wisdom and compassion. For each of us the specific situation that helps us with the uncovering and the embodying is different. It could be having a difficult child, caring for an elderly parent, working an extra job to earn money for retreats, or driving a city bus in a poor part of the city. When we are in the midst of these specifics, we often lose track of our larger purpose. We get angry or impatient and we feel like we are failing. This is the time to call upon Jizo Bodhisattva.
( Excerpt from Jan Chozen Bays, co-Abbot of Great Vow Zen Monastery , in Chozen Roshi's book Jizo Bodhisattva: Chapter twelve, PRACTICING WITH JIZO BODHISATTVA; from The Zen Community of Oregon; http://www.zendust.org/jizo/jizo.html)

The invitation to participate with Jizo is a gentle calling.

Gently, one by one, in this time. All of us, children.

We vow to enter that calling.

Anthony of Padua, in Catholic lore, was a professor, preacher, and finder of lost articles par excellence. It is his feast.

St. Francis, informed of Anthony's learning, directed him by the following letter to teach theology to the brethren:
To Brother Anthony, my bishop (i.e. teacher of sacred sciences), Brother Francis sends his greetings. It is my pleasure that thou teach theology to the brethren, provided, however, that as the Rule prescribes, the spirit of prayer and devotion may not be extinguished. Farewell. (1224)

At Eucharist today I sensed the joy of receiving the silent mystery of presence-itself.

Receptivity invites disclosure.

Here's mine: there's nothing else wanted but the grace of receptivity, reciprocity, and relationality.

Hermits hide from mankind
Most go to the mountains to sleep
Where green vines wind through woods
And jade gorges echo unbroken
Higher and higher enraptured
On and on simply free
Free of what stains the world
Minds pure like the white lotus
- Han-shan

The brook sounds quietly beyond layers of green from this cabin porch.

An itinerant lad will make solo retreat in meditation cabin for a string of days.

Chipmunk is displaced.

Saskia's birthday. She goes to move sailboat put on wrong mooring. There will be string of balloons someone left for her on boat, barbecue, chocolate torte, and ice cream at shop this afternoon.

Her family celebrates birthdays with presence and presents.

Spring morning on the lake:
The wind merges with the rain,
Worldly matters are like flowers
That fall only to bloom again.
I retire to contemplate behind closed doors,
A place of true joy,
While the floating clouds come and go
The whole day long.
- Zhengue (12th cent)

Morning fog burns off.

We are grateful for this birth.

Tommy and I took garbage to the dump in his pickup. Going out to house he lets me out to give a woman with two heavy bags a ride home. Walking Mechanic street it occurs to me that picking up and dropping off and picking up and dropping off again is good enough learning.

The nature of the one Reality must be known by one's own clear spiritual perception; it cannot be known through a learned person. Similarly, the form of the moon can only be known through one's own eyes. How can it be known through others?
- Shankara

To be stranger in familiar places is to choose to acknowledge and allow each thing to be its own reality, nothing else. You cannot own strangers. We ought not try.

The hermit belongs where he is. The hermit is her own. Hermits are reminders we are not far from death. In the shop the woman with asthmatic condition said her doctor told her she could just drop dead at any time. I thought about that. The doctor should have asked her first if she thought death an illusion before he told her the odds she'd be dead in a flash.

A hermit slowly dies in this conditioned world. He says nearly nothing with a silence each must learn on their own.

This inclination to chatter on and on is a land far away from the close hermit.

It is a strange land.

Spirituality isn't about denying the world; it is about relying on truth and love to transform oneself in the world.

At conversation the other evening some spoke about ignoring the news about Iraq, the news about political mud, and the news about the various cultural wars flaring across the nation and the world. Some suggest a "higher" path. I don't know what that path is. "Higher" and "lower" are the products of dualistic thinking. Ecological insight might present a clearer perspective.

Sitting on top of a boulder
The gorge stream icy cold
Quiet fun holds a special charm
Fogged-in on deserted cliffs
A fine place to rest
The sun leans and tree shadows sprawl
While I view the ground of my mind
A lotus comes out of the mud.
- Han shan

I asked Joe today in prison how often he looked at the back of a mirror.

The whole truth and nothing but -- is the cry of both sides of the mirror.

The world is an odd place. We are many odd people.

I can say "yes" to the world and not be smothered by it.
I can see "wholeness" and not fear parts that intimidate.
I can feel "compassion" and not shrink from critical thinking.

These three ways of God do not frighten me.

What frightens me is refusal of God in the world.

We pray by entering the world as God is.

The Downing Street Memo is required reading. It points out that the war was begun as a lie.

Spirituality isn't a private relationship with God. From the beginning everything is in the open. It is when there are attempts to hide or to fool that everyone suffers.

You cannot describe it or draw it,
You cannot praise it enough or perceive it.
No place can be found in which
To put the Original Face;
It will not disappear even
When the universe is destroyed.
- Mumon (13th cent)

The face of God is not hidden. It is the open itself.

Be wary of disguise and deceit. Death and destruction are its fruits.

With eyes and heart open.

See Original Face.

The body begins to weaken.

An old man alone on a darkening ridge
retiring to my hut I accept white hair
but sigh that today and the years gone by
are mindless, like the rivers flowing east.
(--Han-shan)

The mind is lost.

The aperspectival unmaps and the intuitive remaps the terrain of consciousness. Old maps no longer tell where we are going.

Water finds low ground.

If we become water, ground absorbs our passage.

When I die -- water and ground remain water and ground.

Such kindness!

A woman from Europe sat and spoke about Americans. "They lie," she said. "They don't say what they really feel. And they seem always to be telling me to 'Go home'."

We spoke of an unlikely way of finding truth and staying at home.

I have always loved friends of the Way
friends of the Way I have always held dear
meeting a traveler with a silent spring
or greeting a guest talking Chan ...
(--Han-shan, hermit of Cold Mountain)

We spoke of the theological virtues -- faith, hope, and charity (or love).
Faith is yes. Hope is trusting integrity. Love is inclusive compassion

Saying yes means we allow the possibility of what is said to reside awhile in stillness. Yes cradles new arrivals with temporary respite.

Trusting integrity is holding wholeness as template for whatever is viewed or heard. Wholeness lets whatever withholds itself by saying "no" -- some breathing space so as to reconsider the chill of fragmentation.

Inclusive compassion lets in the suffering of the excluded. Compassion surpasses understanding by forgiveness of that which tries to elude -- yes, wholeness.

Born Thirty Years Ago
Thirty years ago I was born into the world.
A thousand, ten thousand miles I've roamed.
By rivers where the green grass grows thick,
Beyond the border where the red sands fly.
I brewed potions in a vain search for life everlasting,
I read books, I sang songs of history,
And today I've come home to Cold Mountain
To pillow my head on the stream and wash my ears.
(--poem by Han-shan, 8th Century poet, tr. from Chinese by Gary Snyder)

We wash our ears with conversation about -- yes, wholeness, compassion.

If we consider truth our home, our real dwelling place, then don't leave it.

She said goodnight.

On her way.

Back home.

Let us be what is where we are.

Soon, we might learn to say: "This is where I am."

While sitting on daybed in kitchen beside Sando, Saskia says: "We are where and who we are...fully."

"Grace" is that which is...given.

“I believe in a poetry determined by the language of which it is made. I look to words, and nothing else, for my own redemption… I mean the words as opposed to content.”
—Robert Creeley

No doubt about it, nor any external reference point, we are what is where we are.

If the words "Christ consciousness" are said, they are the thing itself flowering -- not imposed from without, not inhabited from within -- but, what is itself flowering, as it is, no other.

Do not speak of God. Reveal, instead, what is the manifestation of Itself. Word the wordless with becoming silence.

As you just might be doing right now.

Words pass in silence. They are heard more clearly in their passing away.

I have not heard of a single Buddha, past or present,
who has been enlightened by sacred prayers
and scriptures.
- Bassui

Sando just showed up at cabin door and was let in. Later came Cesco. They arrived in time for Heart Sutra. After the silence and the chanting they knew there would be dinner.

To destroy dualism means to have an attention that is on the border between presence and absence, between good and evil, between A and not-A. Attention directed solely to Presence, to the higher, is the inner equivalent of blind devotion to an external God. For the Higher or the Innermost is actually external to myself here and now. Those who say they are not seeking the external God of the West, but the Innermost self are in danger of a subtle deception. It is still in essence attachment to the world of holy words, images, visualizations. Attention directed solely to the lower is the inner equivalent of atheism and leads to "suicide" -- cynicism and loneliness.
(pp. 159-160, Fr Sylvan citing St. Simeon the New Theologian in Lost Christianity, A Journey of Rediscovery To The Center of Christian Experience, by Jacob Needleman, c.1980)

Around table at Sunday Evening Practice individuals spoke: of dark rooms while wearing dark glasses; of middle places without compass; of patience arising from suffering; of temporary awareness that "lets" and the "letting" necessary to pass through into extended watchfulness. These fragments of reflection -- the curious incursion through doubt, neurosis, and once fixed but now deteriorating belief about anything -- into what we say is another day.

This attention of the heart, this question within movement is actually another, intimate movement that spontaneously arises in the moment between life and death, when the ego is wounded and God is still distant; this attention is prayer in the sense of the Psalmist who asks, and asks and asks; it is that which watches and waits in the night.
(--Needleman, p.160)

We watch and wait in the night.

Asking again and often: "Let us?"

Occupy.

Our midst.

Sando rests on bed in kitchen after surgery for cancer. Cesco got most of the pizza crusts tonight.

In prison this morning man works on the alphabet. Keeps writing "n" for "s" in "basket." We have plenty of one-to-one time.

In regular Meetingbrook Conversation in afternoon we speak about Husserl and phenomenology. We wonder whether intersubjectivity leaves residue of consciousness on three styrofoam cups.

Twelve years and ten years along in prison for two of the men. One talks about his son, the other his daughter -- how it is time goes by without them.

Just because something is what it is, doesn't mean accepting it that way makes anything easier.

Radical empiricism, or immediate experience, is our life-world. Where we are is where life experiences itself in the world.

Today life tries an experience of awareness.

We must investigate.

It is a great misfortune for those
Engaged in learning to take the
Sayings of the sages as mere
Verbal exercises.
- Xue Xuan (1389-1464)

Investigate how the galaxies came to be. How up and down are relative terms. How fossils of fish are embedded along the top of the Himalayan mountain range.

We need to investigate why the Ten Commandments and the Four Noble Truths have nailed the ways we humans lose our way. Why con artists and fraud bilkers are so successful at separating us from our money. Why we would want to go anywhere when the cost of automobile and travel is so expensive.

And then we might wish to investigate the healing loveliness of stillness. The refreshing simplicity of silence. The lithe poetry of spring leaves in twilight breeze.

Sages say something worth hearing.

Wisdom.

Worth.

Hearing.

Where is truth?

Therefore, Ananda, be as a lamp unto yourselves, be as a refuge to yourselves. Take no external refuge. Hold fast to the Truth as a lamp; hold fast to the Truth as a refuge. Look not for a refuge in anyone besides yourselves.
- The Buddha

Truth is not outside. Truth is not inside. Truth is siding itself. It is the immediate next someone. It is the immediate next something.

Truth is relational.

If we ask -- Where is truth? -- we must be willing to face truth.

Truth is nothing other -- it is our engaged interrelating presence as, with, and through what is called -- Truth.

The Tobacconist's
I am nothing.
I shall always be nothing.
I can only want to be nothing.
Apart from this, I have in me all the dreams in the world.
(-- the first four lines of "The Tobacconist's", Ãlvaro de Campos, Lisbon, 15-1-1928, heteronym of Fernando Pessoa, 1888-1935)

Sometimes, nothing -- is all we can realize.

Between you and me. The immediate next. Interim. Betwixt. Thin Place. Itself "I AM."

Siding immediate -- our engaged interrelation with all that is -- a light unto itself.

Siding ourselves in siding itself -- the absolute nearside -- where truth is.

Shall we meet there?

Lamp unto itself all the world.

Blame is substitute for awareness.

Mostly when we blame someone or something we do so from the hiding place of fear or anger. Blame is duality's first line of attack. If we refuse the invitation to awaken, blame is the rejection notice we send out.

The Brahman Dona saw the Buddha sitting under a tree and was impressed by his peaceful air of alertness and his good demeanor. He asked the Buddha:
"Are you a god?"
"No, Brahman, I am not a god."
"Then an angel?"
"No indeed, Brahman."
"A spirit then?"
"No, I am not a spirit."
"Then what are you?"
"I am awake."
- Anguttara Nikaya

At Friday Evening Interreligious Dialogue Conversation we read footnotes by Sri Aurobindo. This Tuesday morning Saskia stirs dough for chocolate puffs. She remembers Aurobindo's words on quietude and simplicity. They are part of the balance from which action springs. The conversation spoke about egolessness. One person said that as long as we have a body we have an ego.

For a contrarian, the opposite of whatever is shown or said is also seen or heard. Perhaps it is inaccurate to say "egoless." Maybe the word "egoistic" applies. Or, "ego is tic" is a helpful breakout of the word.

A tic is -- "A habitual spasmodic muscular movement or contraction, usually of the face or extremities." Tic is also called habit spasm. (http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=tic)

We have, and often are, a habit spasm. This habit spasm is in response to stimuli, conditions, or persons. This usually happens when we are unaware and separated from the well of our true being. We are parched and dry, frightened or anxious to please, desperate or blindly grasping at straw. Habit spasm is unawake reaction. Ego is tic twitching the extremities of our body, emotions, or thinking. Mindless action, defensive emotions, or blaming thinking usually follows.

The well of our being -- the wellness of being -- is ignored during egoistic episodes in our daily life. We exhaust ourselves in these episodes. We have fallen asleep.

Buddha said he was awake.

There is no substitute for being awake.

We are blameless.

In this, well.

We honor and pray for all dead and deadened by war.

Are we ready to go? Is it time to end suffering and craving? Do we yet see peace?

18. By the power of that Buddha's Original Vows,
All who hear his Name and desire birth,
Will, without exception, be born in his land
And effortlessly enter the Stage of Non-retrogression.

19. Bodhisattvas, if you make vows
That your lands will be like this,
While aspiring to save all beings everywhere,
Your name will be renowned throughout the ten quarters.

20. In order to serve millions of Tathagatas,
You can assume various forms and fly to those lands;
After worshipping them with joyful hearts,
You will return to the Land of Peace and Provision.'
(from THE LARGER SUTRA ON AMITAYUS: Part 2, Translated from Chinese by Hisao Inagaki}

("Tathagata" means "Thus gone one." It is a term the Buddha used about someone who has brought an end to suffering and has reached nibbana.
"Nibbana" is the highest goal in Buddhism, the third noble truth. It signifies the end of suffering and craving, the attainment of perfect peace. Ultimately, however, it defies description.)

We nearly approach a time when we see war for what it is -- mindless destruction.

We near awareness of an immaculate element wherein we'll see through every illusion -- when mind reveals clear peace, true heart.

Until then, we look into the eyes of the deadened and stand silent at the burial places of the dead -- and weep.

Silence is
Still
Unworded.
(wfh)

Maybe all we can do is learn how to see and say the world.

Like entrusting yourself
To a brave person
When greatly afraid,
By entrusting yourself
To the awakening mind,
You will be swiftly liberated,
Even if you have made appalling errors.
- Majjhima Nikaya

Maybe what some call forgiveness, and others call awareness, is a way worth considering.

Poem is
Being
Written.
(wfh)

Sitting with others during Poetry, Tea, and Literature yesterday, these four word glimpses ask to be spoken. One final one today.

Holiness is
Itself
Revealing
(wfh)

There are a thousand ways up a mountain. Some harder than others. A few, easy. None deny there is a mountain.

Subhuti, does it occur to you that I believe that through me living beings are led to liberation? Never think that way, Subhuti. Why? Because there is no separate being to lead to liberation. If I were to think there was, I would be caught in the notion of a self or person or a life span. Subhuti, what I call a self is essentially not a self in the way that an ordinary person thinks of it. But neither do I think of anyone as an ordinary person. However, knowing the essence, I can use the name, ordinary person.
- Diamond Sutra

I said tonight I am not egoless, but ecoless -- that is, homeless. We were disagreeing about something at conversation. I was cranky. I didn't enjoy hearing observations that excluded others -- either by dint of superiority, or dint of someone's way being the true way.

It seldom cheers me to hear an overt or insinuated inclination to impress or drive in forcibly the prevalence of one belief system over another, or dismissal of a point of view before all efforts to clarify are exhausted. I'm not fond of this when done by Christians or Muslims, Republicans or Democrats, Harvard grads or drug dealers.

The judgmental mind -- the mind constantly reinforcing hierarchical thinking -- is seldom satisfied short of belittling or patronizing a perceived underling.

I'm not fond of the current administration in Washington. Nobody asked, but I'm not fond of those in the shadows who own these politicians and power players. It distresses me that the truth of Pat Tillman's death was manipulated by them. That Terry Schiavo's agony was fodder for their trough. It pains me that family members of men and women killed daily in Iraq begin to feel through their tears a cold suspicion that their lost loved ones paid a steep price for lies and deception, for arrogance and ambition on the part of their command betters.

For those who brush off the tragedy of this belligerent folly by claiming a high road of rhetoric and spirituality, I say -- stop. Stop before the spirit of this nation is tarnished beyond repair by revenge and torture. Stop before the men following very uncertain tendencies lead us into a darkness too enclosed to allow escape.

In prison today some inmates say that they'd like to have a writing circle to hone skills of expression, clarity, and insight.

The crimes for which they serve time are serious. The crimes committed in my name in the Middle East, under orders of doubtful legitimacy claiming to serve my security, are far more serious. It gives me no joy to witness justice so unevenly distributed.

What joy I do experience is with a diverse loosely-knit association of a conversant community -- in prison, or, in town -- willing to face their lives in the open; to say so; to ransom integrity.

This Memorial Day weekend demands an integrity of recollection. The dead buried and the deadened living among us as a result of war deserve our integrity.

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

On Memorial Day our attentive salute needs to be followed by careful introspection.

It's an old revelation. We've forgotten it. Or we've made it into one of those bridges we burn.

Corpus Domini nostri Jesu Christi custodiat animam meam in vitam aeternam. Amen. (May the body of our Lord Jesus Christ keep my soul unto life eternal.)

The Irish man said when he dies he wants his body taken to Tibet, hacked into pieces, and given air burial. He's not for cremation. He'll settle for being thrown in a trunk of a car, driven downeast, and dropped in a dug hole in the woods -- fully clothed, if you please, no bother.

The mighty ocean has but one taste,
The taste of salt.
Even so, the true way has
But one savor,
The savor of freedom.
- Majjhima Nikaya

Saying something about the Body of Christ without true faith is like trying to say something about air without breathing. That true faith is an intangible thing. It's not that you believe something -- that's just skin. It's that you affirm an experience incapable of any verification -- that's bone marrow. That experience is every breath we take and each thing seen or sound heard. It is the scent of rain rising from dirt before felt splashing on face.

This fabric of matter, the fact of existence itself, and the empty mind that follows the gaze of eyes falling gently on every passing thing -- this is sinew and willingness to move muscle and yawn with abandon.

I have said to the Lord "“You are my Lord, in you alone is all my good"”.
(From Psalm 16, Compline, Thursday)

Forget the hocus pocus. Remember Christ each time body is realized, each time blood flows through veins, or drips helpless to ground.

Some new understanding waits in empty barn for growing season to come. Fields are wet. Corn will get in late. Bees are scarce. Old grain is rationed. It will not satisfy new hunger.

Tonight I pray for the bodies of men and women, children and nature caught in the terror of war and deception of explanation of war. I pray for the Body of Christ unrecognized in person but adored in ideology. It is the feast of Corpus Christi.

All day I've looked at these hands.

They reveal something unimagined.

See them together, profound bow, greeting God.

When it rains, get wet. When you sleep, rest well. When it is time to awake, do not hesitate.

Every day Ruiyan would call to himself, "Master, Master!"
And every day he would respond, "Yes, yes."
Then he would say, "Be awake! Be alert!"
"Yes!"
"From now on, don't be fooled by anything."
"No, I won't be!"
(Mumonkan Case 12)

There are some who want to fool us. There are swindlers who want to take our money. There are feckless bullies who try to twist everything to their advantage. That's how things are at times. That's where we live in the world. What is to be done?

On That Side, beyond the clouds,
The mountain is blue-green as jade
The white clouds on the mountain
Are whiter than white
From the spring on the mountain,
Drop after drop
Who knows how to see the face
In the white clouds?
Clear skies and rain have their times,
They're like lightening
Who knows how to listen to the
Sound of this spring?
It flows on without stopping
Through thousands
And thousands of turns
The moment before thought is
Already wrong
To try to say anything further
Is embarrassing.
- T'aego (1301-1382)

The brook turns and tumbles down mountain these days of rain. It sings and dances with abandon and delight. It goes where it goes without thought of where it is going. Brook is simply every place it is.

We must be everywhere we are. As who we are. Wherever we find ourselves that is where we are. That's the practice. The practice is not to be fooled. Not to pretend we are what we are not. Not to try for what is not ours to attain. Not to hide what is already in the open.

There are those who live to deceive and be deceived. Don't do that.

There are those who live to love and be kind. Do that.

A time will come when whatever is authentically itself will be free to be authentically Itself.

I like the fact that to be enlightened is to be exactly what one is. Without and within; alone and with others; turning one to another and turning back with no effort, no fear, and no idea but the thing itself.

No fooling.

The woman didn't mean to ridicule it, nor did the retired minister mean to make fun of it, when they pointed out that the thought of bread becoming the Body of Christ was absurd and cannibalistic.

This morning at Eucharist the thought never occurred to me. It was, like any conversation, a moment allowing light to shine through the reality with which Spirit and Matter bowed one to the other, one as the other.

The rain has stopped,
The clouds have drifted away,
And the weather is clear again.
If your heart is pure,
Then all things in your world are pure.
Abandon this fleeting world,
Abandon yourself,
Then the moon and flowers will guide you along the Way.
- Ryokan (1758-1831)

It has stopped raining. For now. Days have followed days of rain.

Who knows what takes place when sacred reality interpenetrates what we call ordinary reality? Reality, I submit, is only and always reality, wherever it is.

Does God become human? Does God become word? Does God become bread?

God becomes whatever God is.

The metric theology and mathematical suppositions about the edge of spirit nearing the edge of matter are contemporary versions of angels and pinheads.

It is a matter of out of sight out of mind. We cannot see what we are not conscious of. With consciousness comes seeing. What we consider magical transubstantiation is, in contemporary thought, integral holistic interpenetration. When we come to see, nothing -- nothing -- is impossible to the seeing mind/heart.

And when we do come to see, we see nothing special. Bread is sacred food. Christ is sacred word. Word is sacred moment. Now is sacred Christ. And all of it is simply the reality of being-in-the-world through the manifest enlightenment of What Is Itself.

But, we don't see it. We are not conscious of the gift laid out before us every day. The gift of one another. The gift of bread. The gift of rain, flowers, sunshine, tall grass, panting dog, and complaining cat. Of sunflower seed stuffed in chipmunk mouth. The gift of seeing Itself.

We don't mean to ridicule life in all its glorious manifestation. But we do. We try to make our opinion rise from the corpse of another's opinion. Let's not try that trick. Let's listen to one another. Let's try to see through words and experience to the reality itself.

Be egregious egalitarians.

Honor thyself by forgetting thyself and remembering to wash the dishes, empty the garbage, and say goodnight kindly to all who momentarily leave your sight.

Hold each in your heart.

In your mind.

Lightly.

Wind bends trees. Rain drenches earth. Silence reveals nothing.

There is nothing in front of you;
Nothing, yet everything is as usual.
Do not belabor wisdom to examine it;
Substance itself is empty and obscure.
(--Niutou Farong, 594-657)

There are times words say pseudo-nothing with annoying insistence. Listen to presidential platitudes. Listen to senate monologues. Or corporate executives.

Thoughts arise and pass away,
The preceding no different from the succeeding.
If the succeeding thought does not arise,
The preceding thought cuts itself off.
(--Farong)

We talk too much. Stay too long. Try too hard.

In past, present, and future,
There is nothing;
No mind, no buddha.
Sentient beings are without mind;
Out of no-mind they manifest.
(--Farong)

I suspect learning to think is more valuable than forming opinions or accumulating knowledge.

To think is to see and act in authentic concert with what appears.

Thinking is not thought.

Thinking is ever-nascent presence.

Thinking, like silence, reveals nothing.

A ripe revelation!

Thich Nhat Hanh says Non-self is Interbeing.

A hundred thousand worlds
Are flowers in the sky
A single mind and body
Is moonlight on the water
Once the cunning ends
And information stops
At that moment there
Is no place for thought.
- Han-shan Te-ch'ing (1546-1623)

When we sit, walk, move, or eat in harmony we need not worry about "self." There is only sitting, walking, moving, and eating -- there is no self.

Practice tonight was strong gift of five and three beings among, with, and between one another.

Thich Nhat Hanh writes that mystics and zen masters become more non-dual, less dogmatic or speculative in their talking and writing.

We stumble smoothly into seemless whole as we practice harmony, habitless, with more alertness.

Everyone must practice. Killing and consuming will decrease as screaching selves disappear.

And the Lord descended in the form of a cloud, and Moses stood with him there.
He called on the name of the Lord. The Lord passed before him and proclaimed, "the Lord, the Lord, a God of tenderness and compassion, slow to anger rich in kindness and faithfulness." And Moses bowed down to the ground at once and worshipped. (Exodus 34: 5ff)

We celebrate the Trinity. Compassion, kindness, and faithfulness!

By any name...possible.

Let us mourn for murdered men and women in Middle East.

Thin Afghani taxi driver
ending harsh interrogation
in American chains
does not know
he is dead
(-wfh)

In our prayer we pray for life.

In sorrow we watch it fade.

Will we awake and end war?

Do you know?

Oriole, Rose-breasted Grosbeak, and Red Cardinal fly away when I open door to let cat out.

To practice conversation means to engage what is presented; revealing and engaging a reciprocal presentation with words of one's own.

Cat hunkers below hanging feeder. Rain shower begins. Grass overgrows with sudden spring.

I'd prefer all life to find its way without taking away another's life. In fact, that preference is often my prayer. Sometimes I forget to pray.

Killings in Iraq, in Palestine, in Idaho, and in Maine -- converse with my heart.

As a protective armor around the quiet flame of the heart, prayer is the best defense in the face of such onslaughts. And it is more: it is a life-giving discipline that can bring us to our senses -- back to God -- when we have gone astray. It focuses us and directs us to the source of peace.

Personally I have found the discipline of prayer crucial to maintaining a sense of peace and order in my life. More than anything else it seems that prayer (or the absence of it) can decide the outcome of our day. As Bonhoeffer notes in his Letters and Papers from Prison, time we waste, temptations we yield to, laziness or lethargy in our work -- in general, any lack of discipline in our thoughts or in our interaction with others -- frequently have their root in our neglect of prayer.

Prayer need not be formal. For my wife and me, it is the natural way we begin and end our day together; we pray every morning when we get up, and every evening before we go to bed. Some may pray more often than that, others less. Some people pray on their knees; others use a prayer book. Some speak; some do not use words at all. Pastor Blumhardt was known to open his window each evening in order to say good night to God. As long as our prayer is genuine, and not just an empty rite, it does not matter how we go about it. The important thing is to make room for it, somewhere.
(LIVING ON A PRAYER, an excerpt from Johann Christoph Arnold's book "Seeking Peace")

Whenever I let the cat out I call out in prayer and inform the mountainside to stay alert. Danger is out among us. There is a chasm we have to cross -- prayer alerts us to remain authentic even in the face of threat and danger.

The Jewish philosopher Martin Buber says that whenever we pray, we should cry out, imagining ourselves as hanging from a cliff by our hair, with a tempest raging around us so violently that we are sure we have only a few seconds left to be saved. Buber goes on, "And in truth there is no counsel, no refuge, and no peace for anyone save to lift up his eyes and his heart to God and to cry out to him. One should do this at all times, for a man is in great danger in the world." (Arnold)

In the world, and to the world.

I call out from my partially open door.

Stay alert! Please do not kill!

Jesus said, “Love your enemies, bless them that curse you.” (No wonder we prefer rabid religious revenge to the words of Jesus.)

If we are killed, (my prayer continues), let's go straight home!

(Mama Cardinal balances on wire for a pause above the chasm.)

We have to talk.

Whether the intuition of spirituality, or the investigation of intellectual inquiry -- there is need for conversant community to give ground and breath to the eccentric spaciousness of each one of us.

I let mind and body go
And gained a life of freedom
My old age is taking place
Among ten thousand peaks
I don't let white clouds
Leave the valley lightly
I escort the moon as far
As my closed gate.
- Han-shan Te-ch'ing (1546-1623)

Ground gives place to stand. Breath gives shape to inspiration and expiration.

Wisdom brings up her own sons,
and cares for those who seek her.
Whoever loves her loves life,
those who wait on her early will be filled with happiness.
(Ecclesiasticus 4:12ff)

From birth on we are thrown from the center of wherever we are; pushed out from boxes and confines into the open. Often we fear the open into which we emerge at 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, or 70 -- causing us to try to re-insert into another box, another confine. If we can't say it, someone has to say it for us -- "No!" No further, no more, no bananas.

We shouldn't be where we shouldn't be. It is too easy to default to the known and familiar. Someone helped me once, saying (in effect) "get lost, drop dead, no way." Gratitude comes slowly.

Sometimes we're only a pause, a comma, in a longer conversation. But that miniscule hiatus contains all of the universe in its purpose.

We are each the getting out and the passing through -- the lapping of water from bowl, the level of it refashioning itself.

It is good to have been born.

Good to be here.

What say?

God is what is God.

Break open
A cherry tree
And there are no flowers,
But the spring breeze
Brings forth a myriad of blossoms!
- Ikkyu (1394-1481)

Splitting mauls cannot do what gentle breath can. Yet, "to serve the Lord" is to trust the opening breath of what is/God no matter where it takes the body.

My son, [my daughter], if you aspire to serve the Lord,
prepare yourself for an ordeal.
Be sincere of heart, be steadfast,
and do not be alarmed when disaster comes.
Cling to him and do not leave him,
so that you may be honoured at the end of your days.
Whatever happens to you, accept it,
and in the uncertainties of your humble state, be patient,
since gold is tested in the fire,
and chosen men [and women] in the furnace of humiliation.
(Ecclesiasticus 2:1-4)

It is easier to be militantly opinionated about forcing God's will externally on others than it is to be quietly present as what is authentically real unfolds within us. I wonder if this difference isn't the one that most divides peoples into two: them that demand and impose, and them that invite and integrate.

The essential for hope is to be found in that critical minority of human beings who insist on being unrealistic, who for some still unknown set of reasons continue to argue that human beings are capable of the possibility of empathy, compassion, love and sensitivity even as cruelty, hostility, insensitivity and rationalized dishonesty now dominate. In the final analysis, only those courageous individuals provide the hope for the ultimate realism that is defined by the capacity of a society to survive rather than be destroyed on the altar of human barbarity .
(-- Kenneth B. Clark)
(Kenneth Clark, the psychologist and educator whose 1950 report showing the destructive effect of school segregation influenced the United States Supreme Court to hold school segregation to be unconstitutional. Clark died Sunday, 1May05. He was 90.)

Human barbarity never ceases to surprise. It excludes, fractures, factionalizes, segregates, quarters, and disembowels in the name of the false real, the cruel necessity, and the self-serving power. So much of the unloving and unkind is predicated on the lie, "I'm doing this for your own good," or, "Trust us, we know better than you what you need, and we'll get it for you."

Rather than attempting to replicate the untrue, the unloving, and the disembodied -- we need to invite, integrate, and embody what is most real. By turning and turning again to the true, loving, and whole -- we practice offering up to higher and wiser compassion what current human capacity is not willing or able to reach.

To give ourselves over to what is real is to rise above mere opinion or diminutive thought and ideology to a more difficult yet spacious realm. That realm is where we have attributed "God" -- the realm where humankind, in its best moments, longs to be. Without fear. Without greed. Without domination or suppression.

I do not yet concede as real that which pretends and postures as real in this world. The posturing pretence of politics, economic and military battles over resources, and petty grabs for power and control over others -- these "realities" of life in the world today strike me as closer to delusion and illusion than to what is real.

When Ecclesiasticus says, "prepare yourself for an ordeal. Be sincere of heart, be steadfast, and do not be alarmed when disaster comes," I take note. I resolve to notice what is taking place. I will not venture to know nor try to guess what will take place between this moment and the moment when critical mass arrives. I suspect I will be surprised.

I expect to be surprised by reality. I invite it. I will try to integrate it. I hope to embody it.

After all...

God is what is God.

It's not funny.

I think the time for joking is over. It feels more that it is time to really worry. The prospect doesn't cheer me. Things are unraveling.

The Rycroft Memo; the torture and abuse of Muslims; the chaos of the war against Iraq; the fundamentalist Christian bias against any other belief or thought; the secrecy; the deceptions; the utter disdain for countervailing views.

It is growing more and more absurd to think that the behavior and ideology of this administration is some simplistic Republican/Democratic or conservative/liberal politics-as-usual. It begins to feel far more dangerous. More and more people in this country as well as abroad realize something is wrong.

Intellectuals -- genuine thinkers, not shills and spinners -- are ready to come out of the closet.

"There was no point in seeking to convert the intellectuals. For intellectuals would never be converted and would anyway always yield to the stronger, and this will always be 'the man in the street.' Arguments must therefore be crude, clear and forcible, and appeal to emotions and instincts, not the intellect. Truth was unimportant and entirely subordinate to tactics and psychology." (--Joseph Goebbels)

Joe six-pack is putting down the beer and asking questions.

"The aide said that guys like me [i.e., reporters and commentators] were 'in what we call the reality-based community,' which he defined as people who 'believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.' I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. 'That's not the way the world really works anymore,' he continued. 'We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors... and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.'"(--An unnamed "senior advisor" to President Bush made to a New York Times Magazine reporter last fall, 2004)

Nascar fans are wondering how they let themselves be used.

"Fool me once, shame on you ... fool me twice ...uhhh... you can’t get fooled again." (President Bush)

Even the president doesn't want to -- but is closer to saying, "Shame on me."

"You don't get everything you want. A dictatorship would be a lot easier." Describing what it's like to be governor of Texas. (Governing Magazine 7/98)

"I told all four that there are going to be some times where we don't agree with each other, but that's OK. If this were a dictatorship, it would be a heck of a lot easier, just so long as I'm the dictator," Bush joked. (-- CNN.com, December 18, 2000)

"A dictatorship would be a heck of a lot easier, there's no question about it, " [Bush] said. (-- Business Week, July 30, 2001)

The attempt at humor, to down-home and downplay, upon further reflection, is no longer remotely funny.

The mountains stand unmoving
Just the way they are
All day they let the clouds
Roll out and roll back in
Even though red dust is
Countless layers deep
Not a single speck reaches
My thatched hut.
- Han-shan Te-ch’ing (1546-1623)

The specks of ambition, arrogance, and false words do reach us. There is no immunity. We will have to answer.

The wise man sees ahead,
the fool walks in the dark.
(from Ecclesiastes 2)

How much trouble are we in?

What do we see ahead?

I'm glad it's Pentecost. The mere remembrance of it helps. It helps recall a time when spirit and truth were celebrated. These recollected gifts of the Holy Spirit are sorely missed today. A president who claims to follow his favorite philosopher, Jesus Christ, doesn't seem to have heard of spirit and truth. Maybe Jesus' philosophical lecture wasn't clear enough. Maybe authentic advocacy is an elective course for this president.

I prefer to let this president run his course then disappear into impermanence and irrelevance. There's no use standing under a collapsing building hoping to hold it up. This president has blown the explosives against pivotal pillars of stability and the collapse is spewing unbreathable dust and stench in every direction. Better to comfort the broken-hearted, bury the dead, and sweep clean the debris. Better to cultivate spirit and truth than try to eliminate lies and deceit.

Come, Holy Ghost, Creator blest,
vouchsafe within our souls to rest;
come with thy grace and heavenly aid,
and fill the hearts which thou hast made.
(Words trans­lat­ed from La­tin to Eng­lish by Ri­chard Mant, An­cient Hymns, 1837.)

Pentecost -- the celebration of Spirit and Truth arriving to guide and console those willing to engage the Christ Reality in this existence -- is more than a propriatory possession of the Church. It is a birthday celebration of Original Awareness come to be with everyone and everything open to receive and engage its presence. We've called Original Awareness, "God." The difficulty for us is that we've used the word "God" as a cudgel so long we've forgotten the reality behind the name.

No use fretting over gold, beauty or fame;
Nurturing these, how can we calm
Our fluttering heart?
Non attachment brings deep truth,
And a truthful nature brings immortality.
Empty your heart,
Sit quietly on a mat.
In meditation we become one with All;
Tao billows like the vapors
In a mountain valley,
And its supernatural power wafts into our soul.
- Loy Ching-Yuen (1873-1960)

Lately, a woman attending evening conversations has taken to saying over and over the word "meditation" as her encouraging suggestion for anyone longing to get beyond the surface inanity and daily insanity put forward by dreadful people trying to further numb and dumb the lot of us. Meditation, I suspect, for her, leads to a more profound seeing -- and, thereby, a less likely mindless, hopeless collapse.

Your interests, however, are not in the unspiritual, but in the spiritual, since the Spirit of God has made his home in you. In fact, unless you possessed the Spirit of Christ you would not belong to him. (from Romans 8)

Belonging to Christ is a theme worth meditation.

Avoid the users and abusers of Christ -- they are legion in these times. Instead, investigate Christ with whole mind and whole heart. Investigate what "neighbor" means. With this investigation, accompanied by quiet, even silent, meditation -- there is a possibility we may see.

Celebrate this birth.

Watch ardently.

Speak carefully.

Embody Christ.

Go your way.

If love is all there is...

That the self advances
And confirms ten thousand things
Is called delusion;
That the ten thousand things
Advance and confirm the self
Is called enlightenment.
- Dogen (1200-1253)

...what is it we think we are doing?

Sie sagt fur dich: Ich bin!
(She says for you: I am)
(from Rilke poem)

In this case, let me say it for you:

You are...

Love.

Final meeting of Fantasy, Myth, and Enchantment as Self-Discovery at University College at Thomaston this evening.

No opposite means no need to cross over. Of course, the raft is not the shore -- but when love is all there is: the shore, the water, the raft, the person, and the other shore are not five things.

If love has no opposite it is no wonder there's so much trouble finding words for love. "Who needs more words," a student asks. We need more leaders -- more of a community of shared counsel. With opposition politics there are rigid laws with specific agendas banging against a dyadic solution.

We need more leaders who can see us through.

We grow accustomed to the Dark --
When light is put away --
As when the Neighbor holds the Lamp
To witness her Goodbye --

A Moment -- We uncertain step
For newness of the night --
Then -- fit our Vision to the Dark --
And meet the Road -- erect --

And so of larger -- Darkness --
Those Evenings of the Brain --
When not a Moon disclose a sign --
Or Star -- come out -- within --

The Bravest -- grope a little --
And sometimes hit a Tree
Directly in the Forehead --
But as they learn to see --

Either the Darkness alters --
Or something in the sight
Adjusts itself to Midnight --
And Life steps almost straight.
(Poem by Emily Dickinson)

Maybe we'll only come through if we see community as self-discovery; when we experience connectivity as our natural way of being.

Let's find no opposite to love.

No need to word what is not there.

Present ourselves to our open extended family.

Arriving at the movement taking us through each and every expression of what we are building together -- community itself -- our mythopoetic story and new form of self.

Each leaves final class with common gratitude.

One in all.

Fog sat off Curtis Island most the day.

Fog is visible courtship between sun and sea. Sun is sun; sea is sea. When they become entwined as sunsea there is fog. Droplets of water vapor suspended in the air near surface; fog reveals itself for brief intervals. Then dissipates.

The vagaries of life
Though painful,
Teach us
Not to cling
To this fleeting world.
- Ikkyu (1394-1481)

Water, they say, carries code. Essence and intention take form in water's memory. Water seeks lowest place. Water conforms to any shape. Water is life. It is arche, primary principle of life, according to Thales of Miletus.

In Camden boats are lowered into harbor. Floats are set in place. Visitors stop by. Roads are torn up and repairs snarl northern end of town. Sandals appear. Tracey prepares soil and begins flower work for owners. Fog is sculpted testimony to passing nuptial.

The Sailor

In my movie the boat goes under
And he alone survives the night in the cold ocean,
Swimming he hopes in a shoreward direction.
Daylight and he's still afloat, pawing the water
And doesn't yet know he's only fifty feet from shore.
He goes under for what will be the last time
But only a few feet down scrapes bottom.
He's suddenly a changed man and half hops, half swims
The remaining distance, hauls himself waterlogged
Partway up the beach before collapsing into sleep.
As he dreams the tide comes in
And rolls him back to sea.
(Poem by Geof Hewitt)

Fog clarifies what at bottom is invisible. Fog shapes what is passing.

We come to see by seeing what is coming.

The only mystery left is why we treat each other poorly.

Or, why we refuse God becoming with us.

Ecology of consciousness is nuptial. Ethics is the study and practice of who we are, and who we are with one another; the common impulse for interdependence.

I confess that there is nothing to teach: no religion, no science, no body of information which will lead your mind back to the Tao. Today I speak in this fashion, tomorrow in another, but always the Integral Way is beyond words and beyond mind. Simply be aware of the oneness of things. (Eight, in Hua Hu Ching, by Lao Tzu, Translated by Brian Walker)

We go to prison to converse, to practice writing and math, to be part of healing the broken minds and spirits of ourselves and our times.

What percentage of the U.S. jail and prison population is mentally ill?

Of the nearly 2 million inmates being held in prisons and jails across the country, experts believe nearly 500,000 are mentally ill. According to the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill (NAMI), 16 percent of the prison population can be classified as severely mentally ill, meaning that they fit the psychiatric classification for illnesses such as schizophrenia, major depression, and bipolar disorder. According to staff at city and community jails, 25 percent of the jail population is severely mentally ill. However, when other mental illnesses, such as anti-social personality disorder, borderline personality disorder and depression, are included, the numbers are much higher, and NAMI puts the number of inmates suffering from both mental illness and substance abuse the percentage at well over 50 percent.
(from Frontline Documentary "The New Asylums", aired 10May05) http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/asylums/etc/faqs.html

At Tuesday Evening Conversation at the shop tonight Genevieve said she comes, not for the ideas, but for the spirit. We read Zen and the Kingdom of Heaven. The author speaks of experiencing "no inside, no outside." That intuition changes things. It's part of our going in and out of prison. The distinctions drop. Who is inside and who outside, who is mentally ill and who not -- these borders dissolve and fade. We are left with this person, that person; these words, those observations. Each is itself. We're there to verify that intuition.

Each moment is fragile and fleeting. The moment of the past cannot be kept, however beautiful. The moment of the present cannot be held, however enjoyable. The moment of the future cannot be caught, however desirable. But the mind is desperate to fix the river in place: Possessed by ideas of the past, preoccupied with images of the future, it overlooks the plain truth of the moment. The one who can dissolve her mind will suddenly discover the Tao at her feet, and clarity at hand. (Twenty-One, Hua Hu Ching)

The plain truth of the moment is the ecological ethics of person to person interdependence.

We might not be able to name God, but we can greet and speak with one another.

The intuition is not to name or own; just be with.

Everywhere at ease?

This month brings Meetingbrook to the cusp of beginning its 10th year at the harbor. The raw rain and blowing swells out of the northeast these last few days remind that spring in Maine is a variable notion. So is Meetingbrook – a variable notion.

In blue-ephemeral haze,
You come and go
Through your Zen gate.
On Yen Mountain,
The view’s ten thousand li,
A thousand peaks.
When will we arrive
And be with the floating clouds
Everywhere at ease?
- Liu Chang-ch’ing (710-787)

The notion is a good one. It holds that we are all connected. That wherever gathers, however briefly, more than one person, begins the practice of changing and deepening one’s view of life. That even in solitude the practice of community continues. That even in communion with or in the presence of others the practice of solitude is ongoing.

Meetingbrook is nothing other than a loosely knit association of individuals walking along the path moving from dependence through independence to interdependence --and arriving home each step of the way.

The practice is to be everywhere at ease. With one another. Or alone. No one, no other – just dwelling at home at ease with the ways form changes and time empties – completely in one’s own place: the place of faith, hope, and love. These perennial virtues of faith (saying yes), hope (asking please), and love (wordlessly praying as openness itself) – are variable hermit pathway trails into assertions of affirmation, invitation, and recognition.

Thomas Merton writes about a conversation with the Dalai Lama who asks Merton: “Well, to be precise, what do your vows oblige you to do? Do they simply constitute an agreement to stick around for life in the monastery? Or do they imply a commitment to a life of progress up certain mystical stages?” I sort of hemmed and hawed a bit, and said: “Well, no, that’s not quite what the vows are all about.” But it was interesting to see that this is what he thought the vows ‘should’ be about.” When you stop and think a little bit about St. Benedict’s concepts of ‘conversio morum’, that most mysterious of our vows, which is actually the most essential, I believe, it can be interpreted as a commitment to total inner transformation of one sort or another -- a commitment to become a completely new man. It seems to me that that could be regarded as the end of monastic life, and that no matter where one attempts to do this, that remains the essential thing. (p.337, from “Marxism and Monastic Perspectives,” by Father Louis, O.C.S.O. {Thomas Merton} Talk delivered at Bangkok on December 10, 1968, Appendix VII in The Asian Journal of Thomas Merton, c.1973)

Later, recalling a conversation with Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, Merton writes:
He sent a message to a nearby abbot friend of his saying: What are we to do?” The abbot sent back a strange message, which I think is very significant: “From now on, Brother, everybody stands on his own feet.”

To my mind, that is an extremely important monastic statement. If you forget everything else that has been said, I would suggest you remember this for the future: “From now on, everybody stands on his own feet.”

This, I think, is what Buddhism is about, what Christianity is about, what monasticism is about – if you understand it in terms of grace. It is not a Pelagian statement, by any means, but a statement to the effect that we can no longer rely on being supported by structures that may be destroyed at any moment by a political power or a political force. You cannot rely on structures. The time for relying on structures has disappeared. They are good and they should help us, and we should do the best we can with them. But they may be taken away, and if everything is taken away, what do you do next? (p.338, Merton)

Living life dedicated to inner transformation is a variable notion and moveable feast.

What is essential in the monastic life is not embedded in buildings, is not embedded in clothing, is not necessarily embedded even in a rule. It is somewhere along the line of something deeper than a rule. It is concerned with this business of total inner transformation. All other things serve that end. I am just saying, in other words, what Cassian said in the first lecture on ‘puritas cordis’, purity of heart, that every monastic observance tends toward that. (p.340, Merton)

Meetingbrook has often wondered whether it would find itself elsewhere. Those loosely associated with the place – regularly or irregularly – catalogue their opinions and feelings about our wonderings and inquiries according to the seasons. Hearts are restless until they realize there is no permanent home with fixed street address; realizing this, hearts rest in the open, their true home.

Let us affirm, invite, and recognize one another in this hospitable dwelling place.

As always, we’re here for now.

It's time to change tactics concerning Iraq.

I expected to see only pink blossoms,
But a gentle spring snow has fallen
And the cherry trees are wearing a white coat.
- Ryokan (1758-1831)

Naomi Klein writes:
The administration says the war was about fighting for democracy. That was the big lie they resorted to when they were caught in the other lies. But it's a different kind of a lie in the sense that it's a useful lie. The lie that the United States invaded Iraq to bring freedom and democracy not just to Iraq but, as it turns out, to the whole world, is tremendously useful -- because we can first expose it as a lie and then we can join with Iraqis to try to make it true. So it disturbs me that a lot of progressives are afraid to use the language of democracy now that George W. Bush is using it. We are somehow giving up on the most powerful emancipatory ideas ever created, of self-determination, liberation and democracy.

And it's absolutely crucial not to let Bush get away with stealing and defaming these ideas -- they are too important.

Then:
So what is our role here? We need to support the people of Iraq and their clear demands for an end to both military and corporate occupation. That means being the resistance ourselves in our country, demanding that the troops come home, that U.S. corporations come home, that Iraqis be free of Saddam's debt and the IMF and World Bank agreements signed under occupation. It doesn't mean blindly cheerleading for "the resistance." Because there isn't just one resistance in Iraq. Some elements of the armed resistance are targeting Iraqi civilians as they pray in Shia mosques -- barbaric acts that serve the interests of the Bush administration by feeding the perception that the country is on the brink of civil war and therefore U.S. forces must remain in Iraq. Not everyone fighting the U.S. occupation is fighting for the freedom of all Iraqis; some are fighting for their own elite power. That's why we need to stay focused on supporting the demands for self-determination, not cheering any setback for U.S. empire.
(in "How to End the War" by Naomi Klein, published May 5, 2005, by In These Times ) http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0505-23.htm

Her words suggest we must now truthfully do what the Bush administration has winked and nodded it was doing -- we must work for democracy in Iraq. Not the substitution of Saddam's tyranny for the United State's imperial puppetry. Just because the invasion wore the mask of "for democracy" after the disguise of WMD fell off, doesn't mean the deception used couldn't become the real thing in honest hands.

Same with spirituality. People give up spirituality because they see its abuse and control by those for whom religion and institution are goals substituting for authentic experience.. Spirituality is practice. It is the grace of transparency, presence, and transcendence come home to everyday interaction.

The people of Iraq deserve, finally, their own country. It is a longing to be ordinary, free from both tyrant and usurper.

Tyrant is gone, but we cannot be sure if usurper will let Iraq belong to itself. That will take time and courage. Iraqis need to be confident Americans are not behind the pillaging of their country and resources. We must find again and retrieve our soul -- the one that recognizes and distinguishes fairness, justice, and purity of heart. It might not be too late.

It is a good idea that government must serve the people. There's been enough of the opposite. It is time to take the war away from the administration and work -- Americans and Iraqis -- for transparence, more authentic presence, and the grace to transcend.

Dan Berrigan wrote: "Bodies belong where words are."

It is time to embody authentic democracy and peace.

What do you say?

What do I say?

Are we free to?

Some stayed late after poetry this evening. It is courageous to attempt wording one's life.

To this place of retreat,
The world does not follow;
But many old ailments heal here.
I polish words of old poems;
View mountains, and sleep
Outside my hut.
Colored clouds
Cross the setting sun;
Cicadas ring in the leaves
Of trees.
With this my heart again
Knows happiness;
And who would have thought it,
Without wine or money?
- Yao Ho (831)

It's what makes Saturdays rich. Poetry, Tea, and Literature is really about Berrigan's "Bodies belong where words are." Some poems we write are prelude to the poem writing itself.

Every poem is a good poem. Some think they're good. One or two are goodness itself. It is these we listen for; these we can't hold back when their time comes.

Are you willing?

Write yourself.

We go into prison for conversation. We come out with something harder to comprehend.

Pat, Saskia, Bernard, Steve and I talked about V.I. Lenin's article "What is to Be Done?" about professional revolutionaries; Raymond Carver's poem "At Least"; and the final lines of Salinger's Catcher in the Rye spoken by Holden Caulfield -- "Don't ever tell anybody anything. If you do you start missing everybody.".

So taken with
The faultless face and radiance
Of an alluring moon,
My mind goes farther, farther
To reach remote regions of the sky.
- Saigyo (1118-1190)

At Interreligious Dialogue this evening Sri Aurobindo's translation and commentary of the Bhagavad Gita. It might be true that by their fruits you may know them, but Sri Krishna says it's unimportant to know the fruits, just to perform each act with pure mind and open heart unattached to the results. We have a right to the act but not to the fruits.

Aurobindo says: "With devotion, without desire."

All existence is a manifestation of God because He is the only existence and nothing can be except as either a real figuring or else a figment of that one reality. Therefore every conscious being is in part or in some way a descent of the Infinite into the apparent finiteness of name and form. But it is a veiled manifestation and there is a gradation between the supreme being of the Divine and the consciousness shrouded partly or wholly by ignorance of self in the finite.
The inner Divinity is the eternal Avatar in man; the human manifestation is its sign and development in the external world.
(Sri Aurobindo)

The ordinary -- there's something ordinary about conversation. Even in prison.

I want to spend the day watching this happen
and reach my own conclusions.
I hate to seem greedy -- I have so much
to be thankful for already.
But I want to get up early one more morning, at least.
And go to my place with some coffee and wait.
Just wait, to see what's going to happen.
(from poem "At Least" by Raymond Carver)

You see -- something takes place. What follows is anybodies guess. You open your ears and listen; you open your mouth and speak. Whatever takes place is...gift.

We don't bother to wait -- we can't. We leave. The saluting corrections guards honoring their brothers and sisters as they entered and left are gone from front door. The room we occupied with inmates is empty and dark. The visitors' desk vacated. The wind has shifted northeast.

Like the question asked on Ascension Day, we ask: Where does conversation go when nothing but silence remains?

Each is left to reach their own conclusion.

We have so much to be thankful for.

We try to comprehend.

Without desire.

With devotion.

Gone where?

This Ascension Thursday I sit on porch of cabin reading student's papers. They are mythic writings on experiences and engagements with life. We wrestle with the ordinary each attempt to place the ordinary into words.

Pure seeing, or mere seeing, is itself the ambiguous gift of being in the world. Where did Jesus go during that event scripture and tradition calls his Ascension?

Are we willing to merely look? Are we capable of seeing in and of itself?

And from this, it appears that pure meditation without thought or object -- practiced in order to achieve pure mind or "purity of heart" and thereby enter the Kingdom of Heaven -- is the one authentic strand of Christian spiritual practice that can be traced through at least fourteen centuries back to Jesus Christ and John the Baptist. (p. 121 in Zen and the Kingdom of Heaven, Reflections on the Tradition of Meditation in Christianity and Zen Buddhism, by Tom Chetwynd, Wisdom Publications, 2001)

Where'd he go? Today is the anniversary of my mother's death. Where'd she go?

"Only by purifying the heart -- the depths of the feeling-mind and the seat of passion -- can we free ourselves from our particular egoistic reactions to which we are tethered by long conditioning. The storm of the ego is always on the surface, but in the depths of the mind there is unlimited peace." (Tom Chetwynd)

Theological and historical speculation aside, there is an opportunity to see through the Ascension.

The heart-mind is what is seeing itself.

In this case, Jesus and Katherine. Purity of heart and depth of mind assist their see through and our seeing through.

They were still staring into the sky when suddenly two men in white were standing near them and they said, "Why are you men from Galilee standing here looking into the sky? Jesus who has been taken up from you into heaven, this same Jesus will come back in the same way as you have seen him go there."
(Acts 1:10 - 11)

Calm the storm of ego which always wants things its way. No need to look for reflection when looking for someone. What is looking is what is seeing through the looking.

The same way as you have seen.

Him.

Her.

Today.

We do; we run after illusions.

Sons of men, how long will your hearts be heavy?
Why do you seek for vain things?
Why do you run after illusions?
(from Psalm 4)

The day was odd in the shop. Some talked of NAACP involvement. Some, of dislike of conspiracy theories. Later, reading from book someone left for us, a scatter of opinions that were contentious. The range of opinion fluctuated wildly all day.

Walking along a little path,
I find a footprint on the moss,
A white cloud low on the quiet lake,
Grasses that sweeten an open door,
A pine greener with the rain,
A brook tumbling from a mountain source,
And, mingling with Truth among flowers,
I have forgotten what to say.
- Liu Chang-ch’ing

Four of us -- two dogs, two humans -- walked between streams of divided brook this morning. The flow has cut deeply the ground. It is the way of nature to expose elements to change.

It is good that prisoners find commonality for learning. It is awful to think some in government would use tragedy to manipulate their agenda. It is curious that fidgety reaction would follow the words of someone whose sincerity is surrounded in suspicion.

Even if someone is questionable in our minds, we must first ask ourselves the selfsame question formed for the other.

We must investigate.

No doubt it is the sliver moon.

Practicing respect tries patience.

We suffer seeing only by looking.

Consciousness is changing. That's news to many of us.

Old standards used for thinking about the world have rotted like barn sill with north-west exposure tired from too many storms. New ways of thinking are kidnapped and held for ransom. Until a dollar worth can be affixed, new mind is held captive. Once amortized, new consciousness is parceled like real estate to new entrepreneurs for distribution after signature on loyalty oath.

Everywhere you look
The mountains are covered
With mist and blooming cherry trees.
- Ryokan (1758-1831)

Dawn rain gives way to sun as Cesco and I climb path along Ragged Mountain. Water sits on every grass blade. Underground springs cannot be contained; they gurgle through soaked surface and run in mime of skiers.

Two planes go down in Iraq. Who will be blamed? Who attacked? Which way war's expansion? In this country we are regaled with news of pedophiles and politicians -- both who use their power to grab what they want.

On the mountain, soft with wet, spring growth burrows through and out. Meditation cabin becomes Wallace Stevens' jar in Tennessee

Anecdote of the Jar

I placed a jar in Tennessee,
And round it was, upon a hill.
It made the slovenly wilderness
Surround that hill.

The wilderness rose up to it,
And sprawled around, no longer wild.
The jar was round upon the ground
And tall and of a port in air.

It took dominion everywhere.
The jar was gray and bare.
It did not give of bird or bush,
Like nothing else in Tennessee.
(poem by Wallace Stevens)

It's only, some say, a poem. The first time I heard it (from visiting English teacher Geoffrey the beat poet/singer in New Hampshire in early sixties) I had the old awareness. Now, nearly none. Do I understand? Not much. Nary a clue.


Wallace Stevens is, at times, the exemplary figure of the austere Modernist, shorn of Transcendental excess, wary of its expansionist programme for consciousness: 'Anecdote of the Jar' has been mined by generations of students teasing out its seemingly endless self-referentiality to demonstrate that 'less is more'. The poem is, of course, an ironic critique of the Romantic yearning for the creative interfusion of consciousness and nature as the basis of art. Its circular self-enclosing form seems an austere rebuke to Emerson's more expansive solipsism. Emerson wrote, "The eye is the first circle; the horizon which it forms is the second; and throughout nature this primary figure is repeated without end', but Steven's circling is a demarcation line, an exclusion zone. Similarly the poem cheats the reader's desire for narrative lift-off; this is an anecdote which leads nowhere, which fends off chatty familiarity, and in which there is no significant joining that transcends its constitutive elements.
(On "Anecdote of the Jar" by Pat Righelato)

In the executive, legislature, and judiciary -- in the media, including news, celebrity, and sports -- there is powerful pressure for each to become what someone thinks they should be.

In the cabin nothing becomes itself.

Chatty ceases; transcending unties.

No identity.

Clueless.

As if as is.

"We'll just have to spend some time silent," said man to woman after she noted him coming in and asked him why there was nobody in church at 8:03am. She went up front. Empty churches are inspiring. On back bench he read yesterday's readings. He's a day late for everything.

Simply reverence the Lord Christ in your hearts, and always have your answer ready for people who ask you the reason for the hope that you all have. (1 Peter 3:15)

Got 4.9 gallons of gas for $11.00 at McDucks at corner of Elm and John. Coffee and donut came to $1.20. A classical version of "Knocking on Heaven's Door" was playing on WERU driving Hosmer Pond Road home.

Last night leaving shop Tommy asked what I thought about the conversation that afternoon where somebody was talking about the five Israeli men filming from New Jersey the lower Manhattan crash, burn, and collapse in September 2001 attack. I told him I didn't know what to think. Most times I don't know what to think. If there's evidence, look at it. If there's opinion, listen to it. If there's something to research and investigate, do so.

Form one's own point of view, after investigation and meditation, and continue an open mind. My hope is that there is truth, love, service, and hospitality to be found and shared. I'm willing to opt for attentive presence and compassionate relationality.

21. Flowers Don't Return
A monk asked Kegon, "How about when an enlightened man returns to illusion?" Kegon said, "A broken mirror does not reflect; fallen flowers do not go back to the branch."

[Commentary] This does not mean that an enlightened man is infallible and cannot make mistakes or do bad or foolish things. It means that he partakes of the inevitability of things. Just as flowers make no effort to return to the branch or the broken mirror to be whole again, so the enlightened man does what he does without regret or self-pity.
(from p.89, in Games Zen Masters Play, Writings of R.H. Blyth, ed by Robert Sohl and Audrey Carr)

For now, I'm staying with Blyth's words about partaking of the inevitability of things.

On 61st street and Bay Parkway in Bensonhurst section of Brooklyn there is a church named after St Athanasius. Today, in another, empty, church, I pray with and for all known at that time in that place and from there to here.

Spending time silent.

Hope, if that's what it is, spings from silence.

Workers untie!

In a short time the world will no longer see me;
but you will see me,
because I live and you will live.
On that day you will understand that I am in my Father
and you in me and I in you.
(John 14:19-20)

Sitting in silence, stove hot, walking three times round, chanting Compline.

There are no half measures but in mind. Everything done, wholeheartedly, is practice. Dogen says, that's enlightenment. And enlightenment?

Dogen said, that's practice.

Each way is whole way.

Sitting at table, sipping soup, words of Hua Hu Ching precede bread.

Cesco barks. It is May.

Untie, untie, untie!