Opinions, often, are chains.

On Larry King Live a prosecutor from Boston tried to cast doubt on the case of a man released from prison after eight years of a death sentence conviction for rape and murder of a nine year old girl. DNA testing in this instance -- the first case of reversal -- had been used to exonerate him and to convict someone else who admitted committing the crime. The released man was pardoned by the Governor.

On the show during a panel, nevertheless, the prosecutor -- representing the view that DNA results say nothing about innocence -- did her best to implicate the released man by means of innuendo and retrieval of information she recalled of the case -- a case from another state, a case she had nothing to do with.

Happiness was not freedom from chains but release from chains. Chains were an indispensable part of happiness! (p.23 in The Discovery of Heaven, by Harry Mulisch)

For the man released from prison, the chains rattle against metal and concrete. He hears them in her voice.

She said one thing true -- she doesn't know if the released man is innocent of the crime. Nor does Larry King; nor do I; nor does anybody not there.

The chains are indispensable.

Happiness is an inner fact.

Sometimes people are too insistent on their opinions. We crowd each other this way.

Grant me the ability to be alone,
May it be my custom to go outdoors each day
among the trees and grasses
among all growing things
and there may I be alone,
and enter into prayer
to talk with the one
that I belong to.
- Rabbi Nachman of Bratzlav

Zen masters say don't seek truth, just drop opinions.

Riverbanks lined with
green willows, fragrant grasses:
A place not sacred?
Where?
( - Zen saying)

Refreshing breeze comes in kitchen window.

Maybe Bob is wrong. He says there are two kinds of people in the world: them that say there are two kinds of people in the world; and them that don't.

I say there are only two people in the world: the one who is here; and the one who isn't.

Love Like Salt

It lies in our hands in crystals
too intricate to decipher

It goes into the skillet
without being given a second thought

It spills on the floor so fine
we step all over it

We carry a pinch behind each eyeball

It breaks out on our foreheads

We store it inside our bodies
in secret wineskins

At supper, we pass it around the table
talking of holidays and the sea.
(poem from "Alive Together: New and Selected Poems" (LSU Press, 1996) by Lisel Mueller.)

The one who loves is always here. The one who doesn't is seldom present anywhere.

This is why I sometimes worry about where I am. When absent I am nowhere. When present I am not here.

This is why I think about God.

Like salt, God is love. In the flavoring -- God dissolves into wherever here is.

I'll consider this.

We have a vocation when we are responsive to what is calling our name.

When you look, it is formless;
When you call, it echoes.
It is the great Dharma commander,
Transmitting the sutras
Through precepts of mind.

As saltiness in water,
Transparency in color,
Surely it is there,
But its form is invisible;
The Mind King is also thus,
Residing in the body.
- Master Fu (497-569)

Many things call. True. But. What-Is, alone, knows our name.

When we listen carefully, our work and our life are one thing -- when we respond faithfully to what is calling our name.

We prepare well by residing well within our body.

Transparent.

There was conversation at the Bhagavad Gita reading tonight about simple and complex.

The simple is not involved or complicated; easy.

There is much complexity in being human.

CHAPTER XIV

THE THREE GUNAS

1. The Blessed Lord said: I will again declare the supreme Knowledge, the highest of all knowings, which having known, all the sages have gone hence to the highest perfection.
2. Having taken refuge in this knowledge and become of like nature and law of being with Me, they are not born in the creation, nor troubled by the anguish of the universal dissolution.
3. My womb is the Mahat Brahman; into that I cast the seed; thence spring all beings, O Bharata.
4. Whatever forms are produced in whatsoever wombs, O Kaunteya, the Mahat Brahman is their womb, and I am the Father who casts the seed.
5. The three gunas born of Prakriti, Sattwa, Rajas and Tamas bind in the body, O great-armed one, the imperishable dweller in the body.
6. Of these Sattwa is by the purity of its quality a cause of light and illumination, and by virtue of that purity produces no disease or morbidity or suffering in the nature: it binds by attachment to knowledge and attachment to happiness, O sinless one.
7. Rajas, know thou, has for its essence attraction of liking and longing; it is a child of the attachment of the soul to the desire of objects; O Kaunteya, it binds the embodied spirit by attachment to works.
8. But Tamas, know thou, born of ignorance, is the deluded of all embodied beings; it binds by negligence, indolence and sleep, O Bharata.
9. Sattwa attaches to happiness, rajas to action, O Bharata; tamas covers up the knowledge and attaches to negligence of error and inaction.
10. Now sattwa leads, having overpowered rajas and tamas, O Bharata; now rajas, having overpowered sattwa and tamas; and now tamas, having overpowered sattwa and rajas.
11. When into all the doors in the body there comes a flooding of light, a light of understanding, perception and knowledge, one should understand that there has been a great increase and uprising of the sattwic guna in the nature.
12. Greed, seeking impulsions, initiative of actions, unrest, desire - all this mounts in us when rajas increases.
13. Nescience, inertia, negligence and delusion - these are born when tamas predominates, O joy of the Kurus.
14. If sattwa prevails when the embodied goes to dissolution, then he attains to the spotless worlds of the knowers of the highest principles.
15. Going to dissolution when rajas prevails, he is born among those attached to action; if dissolved during the increase of tamas, he is born in the wombs of beings involved in nescience.
16. It is said the fruit of works rightly done is pure and sattwic; pain is the consequence of rajasic works, ignorance is the result of tamasic action.
17. From sattwa knowledge is born, and greed from rajas; negligence and delusion are of tamas, and also ignorance.
18. They rise upwards who are in sattwa; those in rajas remain in the middle; the tamasic, those enveloped in ignorance and inertia, the effect of the lowest quality, go downwards.
19. When the seer perceives that the modes of Nature are the whole agency and cause of works and knows and turns to That which is supreme above the gunas, he attains to mad-bhava (the movement and status of the Divine).
20. When the soul thus rises above the three gunas born of the embodiment in Nature, he is freed from subjection to birth and death and their concomitants, decay, old age and suffering, and enjoys in the end the Immortality of its self-existence.
21. Arjuna said: What are the signs of the man who has risen above the three gunas, O Lord? What is his action and how does he surmount the gunas?
22. The Blessed Lord said: He, O Pandava, who does not abhor or shrink from the operation of enlightenment (the result of rising sattwa) or impulsion to works (the result of rising rajas) or the clouding over of the mental and nervous being (the result of rising tamas), nor longs after them, when they cease.
23. He who, established in a position as of one seated high above, is unshaken by the gunas; who seeing that it is the gunas that are in process of action stands apart immovable.
24-25. He who regards happiness and suffering alike, gold and mud and stone as of equal value, to whom the pleasant and the unpleasant, praise and blame, honour and insult, the faction of his friends and the faction of his enemies are equal things; who is steadfast in a wise imperturbable and immutable inner calm and quietude; who initiates no action (but leaves all works to be done by the gunas of Nature) - he is said to be above the gunas.
26. He also who loves and strives after Me with an undeviating love and adoration, passes beyond the three gunas and he too is prepared for becoming the Brahman.
27. I (the Purushottama) am the foundation of the silent Brahman and of Immortality and imperishable spiritual existence and of the eternal dharma and of an utter bliss of happiness.
( -- From The Bhagavad Gita, as translated by Sri Aurobindo)

I agree with Pierre Teilhard de Chardin -- the more complexity the more consciousness.

If anything is simple, it is that complexity is the field within which we live, and move, and have our being.

Even with flooding of light it is all far beyond me.

Things are not what we say they are. Things are always and only what they are.

Calming the Mind

Too much knowledge
Leads to overactivity;
Better to calm the mind.
The more you consider,
The greater the loss;
Better to unify the mind.
- Shih Wang Ming (6th century)

To inquire, to ask into something, is to investigate things as they are.

But you have spurned and rejected him;
you are enraged against your anointed.
You have repudiated the covenant of your servant,
you have trampled his crown in the dust.
You have demolished his walls
and laid his fortifications in ruins.
Anyone who passes can despoil him;
he is a mockery among his neighbours.
( from Psalm 88 (89))

We have got to face something as it is. Not as we wish it to be.

We'll ask this in prison in the morning: how does something being what it is transform the whole world?

Don't give a psychological answer to this, rather, give an essential answer.

No explanation.

Just be it.

At times you are simply tired.

When the mind is properly adjusted
And quietly applied
The Way is attainable;
But when you are too fervently bent
On it, your body grows tired;
When your body is tired, your spirit
Becomes weary.
When you spirit is weary, your discipline
Will relax, and with relaxation of
Discipline, there follows many distractions
- Sutra of Forty Two Chapters

When that happens, rest.

Walking trail up Bald Rock Mountain in Lincolnville Monday afternoon. It begins to rain. Cool rain on hot dry mountain. One step after another. Dogs apace. Two Canadian women ahead. Just roots and rocks with rain soaking relief through climb. Just that.

And when That is seen in its
immanence and transcendence
Then the ties that have bound the
Heart are loosened, the doubts
Of the mind vanish, and the law
Of karma works no more.
- Mundaka Upanishad

Later Saskia takes friends from Ontario for early evening sail. Windless drift off bell buoy 2 and Curtis Island, they catch up with downpour again rowing back to dock. Their swordfish and salad, I'm told, was placed on plate downstairs just after 11pm.

Beware the leader who bangs the drum of war in order to whip the citizenry into a patriotic fervor. For patriotism is indeed a double-edged sword. It both emboldens the blood, just as it narrows the mind.
(--Julius Caesar, born in Rome around 100 B.C.)

In America, slash and burn arrogance begins to fray at edges. For the president, the shadows of second term scandal creep from behind curtain. July slows nearing fulcrum mid-month pause -- a baseball all-star game today, a deputy chief-of-staff finally revealed as source for CIA agent name-leak, Jane in a novel dies as Rose and Son are given her family's land surrounding home for unwed mothers in Kentucky. The days quietly stretch alongside reading material and silent watchfulness.

The Writer's Almanac tells that today is the birthday of Henry David Thoreau.
He was 27 years old when he built that little cabin on the edge of Walden Pond and moved in, in an attempt, he said, to "Simplify, simplify, simplify ... to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach."

When Jesus said: "This is my body...This is the cup of the new and eternal covenant," he was teaching essential facts of life. We are -- each and all of us -- the bread and wine, yogurt and strawberry muffins of existence. The very "stuff" of the universe and creation is the very "stuff" of religious symbolism. "Tat tvam asi" -- we are that, "That" is what we are. Jesus was a profound teacher. He refused to make God other, nor did he claim equality with God something to be grasped at.

It is Tuesday. A bumble bee surveys screen at window. Birds ask about sunflower seed. Sun slants across paper in milk crate. Truck climbs Barnestown Road.

Gratitude at being alive types these words. Even as I am being killed in London, Iraq, Afghanistan, the Mid-west, in Cuba, Haiti, and along the Florida panhandle -- I sit in the pause of gratitude for...

Being,

Alive.

"Listen!"

The first word of Benedict's Rule is "Ausculta" -- Listen -- carefully, with the ear of the heart!

When the inward and the outward are illumined, and all is clear, you are one with the light of the sun and moon. When developed to its ultimate state, this is a round luminosity which nothing can deceive, the subtle body of a unified spirit, pervading the whole universe. Then you have the same function as the sun and moon.
- Liu I-Ming

We must continue to listen. Listening incorporates, incarnates, and we embody what is embraced.

St Benedict (480 - 547)
Benedict was born at Nursia, in Umbria, and studied in Rome; but he was unable to stomach the dissolute life of the city, and he became a solitary hermit at Subiaco. His reputation spread, and some monks asked him to be their abbot, but they did not like the discipline he imposed and tried to poison him.
(http://www.universalis.com/)

He didn't die, not then. He went on to be an inspiration for monastics, male and female. (But what is it about us that the inclination to kill what we do not like or understand is so strong?)

Just as there exists an evil fervour, a bitter spirit, which divides us from God and leads us to hell, so there is a good fervour which sets us apart from evil inclinations and leads us toward God and eternal life. Monks should put this fervour into practice with an overflowing love: that is, they should surpass each other in mutual esteem, accept their weaknesses, either of body or of behaviour, with the utmost patience; and vie with each other in acceding to requests. No one should follow what he considers to be good for himself, but rather what seems good for another. They should display brotherly [and sisterly] love in a chaste manner; fear God in a spirit of love; revere their abbot with a genuine and submissive affection. Let them put Christ before all else; and may he lead us all to everlasting life. (From the Rule of Benedict, abbot; Put Christ before everything)

"All else" might be diversion of mind that cannot accept the wholeness of what is as-it-is and thereby creates "elseness" to inaugurate the process of mental differentiation leading to exclusion and fragmentation. "All else" is what stands between us and the ever-present wholeness we call "God."

To put Christ before all else is to avoid dissembling by entering directly the monastic embrace of the Christ Reality.

There is much sadness in the world. From bombings and bullets to bombast and bullying -- so many have so much difficulty finding a clear and safe path upon which to walk.

Poem

The unspoiled colors of a late summer night,

The wind howling through the loft pines --

The feel of autumn approaching;

The swaying bamboos keep resonating,

And shedding tears of dew at dawn;

Only those who exert themselves fully

Will attain the Way,

But even if you abandon all for the ancient path

of meditation,

You can never forget the meaning of sadness.
(from The Zen Poetry of Dogen, Steven Heine)

Exert ourselves, yes. But more -- Exhort, that is, encourage ourselves fully! This exhortation to listen is powerful practice. And not to shrink from what is heard.

This listening is a round luminosity which nothing can deceive.

Thank you, Benedict!

A friend argues portioned information, portioned revelation. (Something portioned is a part separated from a whole.) He believes Jesus gave secret teaching to some, and befuddling stories to others. He holds to the many and the elect template.

I don't.

If you desire to attain enlightenment, you should steadily walk the Way with a resolute heart, with courage, and be fearless in whatever environment you may happen to be. Destroy every evil influence that you may come across; for thus you shall reach the goal.
- Sutra of Forty Two Chapters

The philosopher Edmund Husserl (1859-1938) spoke of "bracketing" in a way that puts the word "destroy" in perspective.
Phenomenological reduction is also a method of bracketing empirical intuitions away from philosophical inquiry, by refraining from making judgments upon them. Husserl uses the term "epoche" (Greek, for "a cessation") to refer to this suspension of judgment regarding the true nature of reality. Bracketed judgment is an epoche or suspension of inquiry, which places in brackets whatever facts belong to essential Being.

Husserl argues that bracketing is a neutralization of belief. Doxic positing (i.e. the positing of belief) may be actual or potential. Doxic positing may occur in every kind of consciousness, because every consciousness may actually or potentially posit something about Being.
(--from "Husserl'’s Ideas on a Pure Phenomenology and on a Phenomenological Philosophy" at http://www.angelfire.com/md2/timewarp/husserl.html)

To destroy literally means to pile up. Do we destroy -- that is, pile up to the side -- so that a new passageway might be found? Is this destroying also applicable to any of, or all, our beliefs?

What is Jesus saying? What does it mean to say that the mysteries of heaven are revealed to you?
"Listen, anyone who has ears!"
Then the disciples went up to him and asked, "Why do you talk to them in parables?" "Because" he replied "the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven are revealed to you, but they are not revealed to them. For anyone who has will be given more, and he will have more than enough; but from anyone who has not, even what he has will be taken away. The reason I talk to them in parables is that they look without seeing and listen without hearing or understanding. So in their case this prophecy of Isaiah is being fulfilled:
You will listen and listen again, but not understand,
see and see again, but not perceive.
For the heart of this nation has grown coarse,
their ears are dull of hearing, and they have shut their eyes,
for fear they should see with their eyes,
hear with their ears,
understand with their heart,
and be converted
and be healed by me.
(from Matthew 13)

The reality of the kingdom of heaven is revealed. Some say, and I'd agree, it is revealed here and now. The mysteries are revealed.

We see it by listening.

We hear it by looking.

This seeming paradox is cross-learning.

By listening and listening we see more. By looking and looking we hear more. Many and some do not listen nor do they look. We grow course in our closed passageways. We remain insulated and detached when we refuse to break through ossified and separative walls.

These walls, in heart and mind, restrain us from experiencing the pain of compassion and integration. We are -- all of us -- of the whole. We are not parts to be distributed and dispersed into geographies and categories of separateness.

The evil influence to deny what-is, to ignore the ground reality of existence itself -- must be put aside, piled off to the side -- so that we might pass through to what-is, to the ground reality of existence itself.

Peter Russell says, "We don't create reality; we create our experience of reality." (Russell is author of From Science To God: The Mystery of Consciousness and the Meaning of Light.)

Meher Baba said: "Don't worry; Be happy." Genuine Reality is not something to worry about. Genuine Reality is something in and with which to be happy. We might not be able to see God because God is not some thing to see. But in our looking and in our listening we might become aware of the permeating presence of looking-Itself, of listening-Itself -- within and as our looking and listening.

The secret teaching of Jesus is that there is no secret teaching.

Christ-Reality is revealed. It is whole.

It is revealed as referred to in the "Our Father" where the words say: "On earth (as it is) in heaven."

"As it is." This is the revelation of wholeness. We are not other than "as it is."

In the open.

As love is.

On/in.

Earth/heaven.

Another way of seeing things.

I was wondering during Lauds at Saturday Morning Practice what it would be like to be Christian. Not in name. But in fact. To become the Way of Christ?

By a green jade lake,
What a wonderful sight:
An old hermit fathoming Tao.
Aren't they the lucky ones,
Humble and still,
Quietly humming the
Melodies of heaven?
- Loy Ching-Yuen

I was wondering what it would be like to follow the Tao, the Way.

Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil; cling to what is good. Be devoted to one another in brotherly [and sisterly] love. Honor one another above yourselves. Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor, serving the Lord. Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer. Share with God's people who are in need. Practice hospitality.

Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse. Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn. Live in harmony with one another. Do not be proud, but be willing to associate with people of low position. Do not be conceited.

Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everybody. If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. Do not take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God's wrath, for it is written: "It is mine to avenge; I will repay,"says the Lord. On the contrary:
"If your enemy is hungry, feed him;
if he is thirsty, give him something to drink.
In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head." Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.
(Romans 12:9-21 New International Version)

I was wondering why so many people call themselves Christian. Paul, and Jesus before him, attempted to be Christian. They arrived at words that are seldom, if ever, contemplated and enacted.

Let's not call ourselves what we are unwilling to enact.

Let's first step onto the Way. Then, embody the Way. Where, in silence and in active word, we do what we are.

To be what we are we must become what we are.

For this, love must be sincere.

I watched five women sit in a circle on the deck. They were smoking cigarettes.

Passions grow from the will
The will grows from thought and imagination:
When both are calmed,
There is neither sensualism nor transmigration.
- Sutra of Forty Two Chapters

It's hard to comprehend that the smoking of cigarettes continues.

That's only one thing I don't comprehend.

Another has to do with blowing up people with bombs.

That's two.

Too many.

The answer: conversation.

This is work that is alive,
Effervescent, free, liberated,
Gloriously enlightened, true,
And great.
Do you think it can be attained
By people who shut the door
And sit quietly with blank minds?
- Liu I-Ming

The question: What creates hope when bombs and bullets destroy faith?

For the suffering of those innocently hurt and killed in London -- and for the suffering of those who knowingly set off explosives -- our prayers.

Even in silence conversation is sacred.

Let's begin one.

Kindness. That's his religion. So says the Dalai Lama. It's his birthday.

There is no need for temples, no need for complicated philosophies. My brain and my heart are my temples; my philosophy is kindness.
(-- Dalai Lama)

His religion -- and, his philosophy.

Kindness isn't for saps or doormats. Sometimes kindness is harsh and cracks the shell that covers who we really are. We say at those times, "Thank you for the kindness."

Of course we're grateful. Only when we are who we really are can we be grateful.

Be kind to yourself.

Freedom is good. Independence is good. Where these two good things wish to go is toward a loving and just interdependence.

Heaven and heart
Remain peacefully unmoved,
Yet their life breath is
Unceasing, and is seldom
Known to rest.
The sun and moon continue on
Their courses day and night,
Yet their light has not changed
Through the ages.
Late at night when others rest,
Sitting alone I look deep into my heart.
Distractions cease, truth alone becomes
Manifest as dew appears at dawn.
The mind is then free and responsive.
- Hung Ying-ming (~1596)

It was quite radical to declare freedom toward self-reliance and equality of each with all. We must remember the revolutionary roots of this step. We are inclined to forget what we in the United States were throwing off -- namely: fear, no or false representation, unresponsive authority, being controlled by an established and privileged order ruled by out-of-touch arrogance. It is time to remember -- and to pray for our country, again.

How To Be a Poet
(to remind myself)

Make a place to sit down.
Sit down. Be quiet.
You must depend upon
affection, reading, knowledge,
skill -- more of each
than you have -- inspiration,
work, growing older, patience,
for patience joins time
to eternity. Any readers
who like your work,
doubt their judgment.

Breathe with unconditional breath
the unconditioned air.
Shun electric wire.
Communicate slowly. Live
a three-dimensioned life;
stay away from screens.
Stay away from anything
that obscures the place it is in.
There are no unsacred places;
There are only sacred places
And desecrated places.
(Poem: "How To Be a Poet" by Wendell Berry from Given New Poems, Shoemaker, Hoard, Washington, D.C.)

Let us be a sacred place...

Again.

Enjoy freedom!

At table tonight a guest says she undertakes an adventure. Quite without choice she is given change -- husband dies, material possessions gone, new direction begun.

The curious gift of independence.

Today she is Buddhist Nun Ru,
Yesterday she was Teacher Wang.
Although born to wear silken gauze,
She now wears only the roughest hemp.
Mouths that open and spew out lofty talk
Have no interest in becoming buddhas.
Leap out of the cauldron of right and wrong,
Cut off completely the road of life and death,
Then enter tiger's lair and demon's palace
With a heart that feels not the slightest fear.
- Zhenru

Fear constricts. No one is meant to fear God. Love expands. This is how God sees.

At the shop, hanging from balcony, American flag alongside Canadian flag. No country stands alone. We stand together, side by side.

Nunc Dimittis *

Little time now
and so much hasn't
been put down as I
should have done it.
But does it matter?
It's all been written
so well by my betters,
and what they wrote
has been my joy.

*"Nunc dimittis" are words from the Vulgate Latin
translation of the New Testament,
Luke 2:29, Nunc dimittis servum tuum, Domine . . .
-- "Now thou dost dismiss thy servant, O Lord."
(by James Laughlin)

Once we fought for freedom. We have to find it again.

It is time to word justice without gunpowder.

Say it better. Say love. A curious gift.

That which is form.

Is emptiness.

Obverse.

Converse.

Too.

What is Laura Common?

Take up a pencil. Draw a circle. Write the words "What Is" inside the circle. Then write the names of a dozen people you know. Write the names of a dozen countries, a dozen animals, plants, birds, bodies of water, asylums, hospitals, prisons, cemeteries, and situations that have occurred in your life to date.

Look at the circle. Familiarize yourself with what is written there. This is your mind. This is mind itself. This is also your life. This actually is life itself. Everything encompassed by your gaze, everything included (as well as the hundreds of thousands of not yet included names) within your watchfulness -- is you. Everything is me. Everything -- all that is -- is of one another.

I have just three things to teach:
Simplicity, patience, compassion.
These three are your greatest treasures.
Simple in actions and in thoughts,
You return to the source of being.
Patient with both friends and enemies,
You accord with the way things are.
Compassionate toward yourself,
You reconcile all beings in the world.
- Lao Tzu

Now, in order to transcend the inclination to believe there is an inside of the circle and an outside of the circle, erase the circle line. The template form that helped us at the beginning has evaporated. There is no inside. There is no outside.

There is only each and every one of us, each and every thing, place, name, being.

Each of us is what is. Side by side. Each in all. All in each. Each self in all being. Each being in all self. An unbroken wholeness. Without exclusion. Nothing unexcluded. Each, and all, seeing. Each, all, seen.

This is what is -- looking and seeing we watch out for one another. We look into one another. We see Itself -- Itself being what is carefully embracing each and all as it is.

With simplicity, patience, compassion.

This is a Laura Common. A Laura Common is where each finds each. A Laura Common is when each sees all. It is how all looks at each. It is why all is all and each is each -- in, with, through, and as one another.

A Laura Common is a practice of wholeness. It is practiced by individuals longing to be what they are -- namely, undivided. It is a simple, patient, and compassionate being in the world with eyes open, heart open, and mind open.

Tell one another what you see. Share what your listening receives. Embrace the silence and stillness you find in the presence of one and all.

Then do the next thing there to do. Mindfully, with care, and with no special effort. Merely act with what is inviting your action; come to something without knowing why.

Support a Laura Common. Grow your own. Visit one another. With deep listening and loving speech recognize what is present in our midst.

Reconcile all beings.

July/August 2005 Meetingbrook Hermitage Bookshop/Bakery Update
An Invitation for Subscriptions
To Support Meetingbrook Harbour Retreat Dedicated to Interreligious & Interdependent Dialogue -— Unveiling and Practicing Peace Between Ways.

Dear Community and Ever-present Friends of Meetingbrook,

We begin our 10th year. We love being here. Our goal is to stay at the harbour. We are asking the larger Meetingbrook community for additional support in order to keep Meetingbrook’s Harbour Retreat on Bayview Street open. We’re beginning a Laura Subscription to Meetingbrook.

A “Laura” is a footpath or trails that individuals, (historically, hermits or solitaries), walk to connect with others. Meetingbrook’s Laura embraces any individual interested in the convergence of their inner and outer life. We see the Harbour Retreat as a central connecting place, a Laura Common, for individuals to come to for refreshment and sustenance on their particular spiritual, meditative, active, contemplative, or intellectual life of prayer and learning. Our koan with us since 1996 is: Embodying the dwelling place of the Alone; Stepping aside to make room for Another!

Ostensibly a bookshop and bakery, the real purpose of Meetingbrook Harbour Retreat is to be a center for conversation, contemplation, and community in the heart of Camden. It is a place where anyone can drop in for conversations that range from the serious to the silly, from spiritual inquiry to practical exchange of skills and knowledge. Primarily, it is hospitality.

Our time, and the time of the people who staff and support the harbour shop, is all given voluntarily. We are only secondarily a place that offers books, music, baked goods, and assorted items for sale. Hence our request for support. For the first nine years of the shop we supported the harbour location (happily) with our other employment -- workers comp audits and teaching. We now need to share the costs of rent, oil, wood, and utilities with those interested in preserving the space at the harbour. The donations will be used to cover the $18,500 yearly cost to run the harbour site.

Both visitors and locals genuinely enjoy the shop and its location. These friends from near and far grace our doors. As the public face of Meetingbrook Hermitage, we emphasize community, learning, and sharing. Living a contemplative and meditative life in the open is our practice and invitation. Here is an opportunity to cultivate such a space.

He who truly attains awakening knows that deliverance is to be found right where he is. There is no need to retire to the mountain cave. If he is a fisherman he becomes a real fisherman. If he is a butcher he becomes a real butcher. The farmer becomes a real farmer and the merchant a real merchant. He lives his daily life in awakened awareness. His every act from morning to night is his religion. (Sokei-an)

Subscriptions: When you make a donation to Meetingbrook, this is what we have to offer you:
1. A place on the harbour to gather daily for conversation, coffee, tea, and the practice of
community – all on the house. All events at Meetingbrook are free, open, and informal.
2. Use of the Harbour Room. Free borrowing of any used/or Laura Library books, tapes.
3. Sails with Saskia in summer. Use of rowboat at shop.
4. Use of patio anytime, of gas barbeque grill, of food offered in hospitality.
5. A forum for structured conversations and a place for personal expression of growth.
6. A loosely-knit association and membership in a community that is open, interested, and
engaged in active practice of hospitality and compassion with one another.
7. A place of intellectual and spiritual practice of deep listening and loving speech.
8. A chance to be yourself. To be heard. And to listen.
9. The opportunity to be part of a Laura Common -- an unusual expression of an evolving
consciousness rooted in everyday individual solitude and shared community life.
10. Computor and wireless internet access for all to use at the harbour location.
11. Note – Any and all donations are welcome. We’ll show our appreciation by giving
• A 10% yearlong discount on books and music for donations of $50.00 or more.
• For donations of $500.00 or more -- a 20% yearlong discount, as well as two overnights in the Harbour Room based on availability.

We will ask for donations each year. If there is an interest and a willingness to give to the continuation of Meetingbrook at the harbour, we will gratefully continue to cultivate the practice of presence. If we do not near the amount needed to pay the expenses of the place, we will quietly return the donations made and resume the life of Meetingbrook at Ragged Mountain. Let’s see how it goes.

Thank you for the opportunity to deepen the practice of community with you. We would like to receive any donation, or pledge of one, by the first week of September, 2005.

Sincerely, in the Way and the Dharma,
Bill, Saskia, Sando, Cesco, Mu-ge, and all who grace Meetingbrook

Meetingbrook Dogen & Francis Hermitage is a Schola Gratiae et Contemplationis, i.e., a School of Gratefulness and Contemplation. Bookshop and Bakery opened 29 June1996. Hermitage was formed as a 501 (c) (3) non-profit organization in 1998 for the purpose of serving as a place of collation and recollection for the side-by-side practice and study of Buddhist Zen Meditation, Christian Contemplative Prayer, and the Engaged Service flowing from each. Central to Meetingbrook is its Laura Common – dedicated to a forum for individuals sharing practice with others, and its Schola -- dedicated to Interreligious & Interdependent Dialogue —Unveiling and Practicing Peace Between Ways. Donations are always gratefully accepted for the continuance and deepening of Meetingbrook. Visit www.meetingbrook.org 207-236-6808 Please send your donations to Meetingbrook, 50 Bayview St., Camden, Maine 04843 -- Thank you!

Tomorrow begins our tenth year at the harbor hermitage location in the form of bookshop and bakery.

Today the State of Maine said we are recognized as a house of religious worship.

At Tuesday Evening Conversation, after reading from Zen and the Kingdom of Heaven, we spoke about the importance of the mind remaining in the body. It is there that we can come to see and understand all there is to see and understand.

Consider worship as devotedly and intentionally holding another or others in high esteem. Consider religious as that which holds us connected.

To be a house of religious worship, then, is the practice attempting to embrace what-is, and hold what-is whole by means of devoted and intentional interest in one another. This form is a sign of life lived in simplicity, integrity, and faithful engagement -- life lived in study, practice, and service -- in the name of what is holy.

Stripped of reason my mind is blank
Emptied of being my nature is bare
At night my windows often breathe white
The moon and stream come right to the door.
- Shih-wu (1272-1352)

Wherever men and women encounter each other with deep listening and loving speech, where yes, wholeness, and compassion take precedence over their lack -- it is there that religious and spiritual life is grounded in What-Is-Real.

There's a red Ford used econoline van in the dooryard. It has a hydraulic lift for wheelchair or any other necessary uplift. The brown caravan ends its good service by relinquishing its gears and shifting. It sits in a back field traded in Belfast with a daisy tucked under windshield wiper.

We love our hermitage life. The sacrament of encounter with the one who shows up in our midst on any given day is what Meetingbrook quietly longs for and attends.

We don't pray for holiness; holiness comes as prayer for one another. And prayer is holding one another in light and understanding.

From the rising of the sun to its setting, What-Is-Holiness is to be praised!

It comes to us to do the right thing. Always, it is up to each one of us.

Careful! Even moonlit dewdrops,
If you're lured to watch,
Are a wall before the truth.
- Sogyo (18th century)

The film must fall. Wax melt. Veil lift. Masks removed. It is time to allow truth to return. Let hope be permitted.

This is prayer -- to bring again to the open what has fallen into closed rooms and darkened motivations.

It comes to you, and us -- truly we are the ones it comes to.

Who are we? We are any one of us willing to enter, and be entered by, truth.

We are where light seeks to finds its way through.

Choose light. Be shone through. Please. See for yourself. Come through!

No lure. No watching.

Simply Itself.

You, seeing Itself.

Lightning and thunder roll over Bald Mountain. Sando crawls under desk. She doesn't like thunder and lightning.

Now Samuel was dead, and all Israel had mourned him and buried him at Ramah, his own town. Saul had expelled the necromancers and wizards from the country.(1 Samuel 28:3-4)

Watching Donald Rumsfeld on three different Sunday news programs -- he skillfully buries any thought he might be mistaken about what the Pentagon has loosed in Iraq.

Sando wraps herself around chair leg and computer wires -- knocking to floor the odd unattached whatnot.

She hides from what terrifies her.

I wonder what terrifies the Secretary of Defense.

I'd like to think kindly of him.
Not be terrified.
As rain begins.

Real haiku is the soul of poetry. Anything that is not actually present in one's heart is not haiku. The moon glows, flowers bloom, insects cry, water flows. There is no place we cannot find flowers or think of the moon. This is the essence of haiku. Go beyond the restrictions of your era, forget about purpose or meaning, separate yourself from historical limitations -- there you'll find the essence of true art, religion, and science.
- Santoka Taneda - tr. John Stevens

Rumsfeld offers war. Santoka, poems.

We move silently
In the cold rain
Carrying the white boxes in front

Will the town
Throw a festival
For those brought back as bones
(Santoka Taneda, last of the wandering beggar-monks, wrote these haiku in 1937 protesting against the savage Sino-Japanese war.)

The poet speaks and I accept his words.

I reject the war-maker's offer.

Poetry is insight pointing things out.

Wherever and whenever
The mind is found
Attached to anything,
Make haste to detach
Yourself from it.
When you tarry for
Any length of time
It will turn again into
Your old home town.
- Daito Kokushi (1282-1334)

Everything is gift. There is nothing to hold on to. We are asked to enjoy the ride.

Let go.

I sent an email to my internet provider. They've tried twice to break through the telephone company's own koan, "If you'd like to make a call, please hang up and try again."
Hello Patrick,
I left a message on your voice mail Thursday asking a third attempt to get DSL hooked up to my number at 50 Bayview Street in Camden.
If this attempt meets with success I'll have solved the Zen koan, "What does the third thing have to do with one and two?" (This is a very profound riddle. It solves the previously unsolved koan, "Not one, not two.")
Please dismiss my previous email that said I'll not be trying number three. Or, find me a Zen Master with only two arms, two legs, two eyes, and two ears who nods yes to three without dismissing one and two.
Best,
Bill

Let's go.
(Please visit http://meetingbrook.org/update.htm)

Here's the question: If you see something from every point of view, are you only looking at yourself?

Utter emptiness has no image,
Upright independence does not rely on anything.
Just expand and illuminate the original truth
Unconcerned by external conditions.
- Hongzhi Zhengjue (1091 -- 1157)

There's a tricky issue around seeing only yourself: you're either an egoistic narcissist, or you're simply enlightened.

When John first felt Jesus' approach, then finally saw him, he was encountering the one reality that is distributed everywhere, yet not anywhere else but where it is.

John the Baptist is the only saint in the calendar who has two feasts to himself: one, in August, to celebrate his death, and one, in June, to celebrate his birth. And this is as it should be, for as Christ himself said, John was the greatest of the sons of men.
The greatest, but also the most tragic. A prophet from before his birth, leaping in the womb to announce the coming of the incarnate God, his task was to proclaim the fulfilment of all prophecies -- and thus his own obsolescence. And he did it: with unequalled courage he spread the news that he, the greatest of all men, was the least in the kingdom of heaven. His disciples, and the devil, would have preferred him to fight, to build his sect, to defeat this upstart whom he himself had baptized, to seize his place in history. But he did not -- and so, rightly, he has his place, and he has glory in heaven.
We envy the great and the talented, and sometimes we think that they themselves are beyond envy. But when they come across someone with greater gifts, as one day most of them will, they will see for the first time what it means to feel like us. Let us pray that they, like John the Baptist, may pass that test.
http://www.universalis.com/-400/today.htm

Saskia shows me some pictures from New Brunswick. "I found this roll of film in the car. I thought it was something else -- but it's not."

She's right. Something is never something else. It is always and only itself.

That's something to appreciate.

This is what we come to see after long last.

Each is always and only itself.

In emptiness; utterly so.

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.