"Bodies belong where words are" -- wrote poet Dan Berrigan.

This is a Feast of Assumption meditation.

Whatever happens to our bodies? In Christian tradition, Jesus' went missing. So did Mary's. Where does a body go when it simply disappears? Where will ours go?

My hut settled among neighbors,
I ignore the noise of horses and carts.
You ask how I get along --
My mind remains wide,
So my place is naturally remote.
- Tao Yuan Ming (365 -- 427)

August 15th celebrates, among other things, the Catholic Feast of the Assumption of Mary into heaven, the birthday of Sri Aurobindo, the 5th anniversary of the death of our friend and elder Janet Rhodes, and one final salute on this day to Jo-Ann as she moves into new form of Assumption.

The belief in the corporeal assumption of Mary is founded on the apocryphal treatise "De Obitu S. Dominae," bearing the name of St. John, which belongs however to the fourth or fifth century. It is also found in the book "De Transitu Virginis," falsely ascribed to St. Melito of Sardis, and in a spurious letter attributed to St. Denis the Areopagite. If we consult genuine writings in the East, it is mentioned in the sermons of St. Andrew of Crete, St. John Damascene, St. Modestus of Jerusalem and others. In the West, St. Gregory of Tours (De gloria mart., I, iv) mentions it first. The sermons of St. Jerome and St. Augustine for this feast, however, are spurious. St. John of Damascus (P. G., I, 96) thus formulates the tradition of the Church of Jerusalem:

"St. Juvenal, Bishop of Jerusalem, at the Council of Chalcedon (451), made known to the Emperor Marcian and Pulcheria, who wished to possess the body of the Mother of God, that Mary died in the presence of all the Apostles, but that her tomb, when opened, upon the request of St. Thomas, was found empty; wherefrom the Apostles concluded that the body was taken up to heaven."

Today, the belief in the corporeal assumption of Mary is universal in the East and in the West; according to Benedict XIV (De Festis B.V.M., I, viii, 18) it is a probable opinion, which to deny were impious and blasphemous. (Catholic Encyclopedia, The Feast of the Assumption, http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/02006b.htm)

The word "Blasphemy" (Greek "blaptein," "to injure", and "pheme," "reputation") signifies etymologically gross irreverence towards any person or thing worthy of exalted esteem. In this broad sense the term is used by Bacon when in his "Advancement of Learning" he speaks of "blasphemy against learning". St. Paul tells of being blasphemed (I Cor., iv, 13) and the Latin Vulgate employs the word blasphemare to designate abusive language directed either against a people at large (II Kings, xxi, 21; I Par., xx, 7) or against individuals (I Cor., x, 30; Tit., iii, 2). (Ibid)

Reputations are fragile and ephemeral things. More valuable than protecting or controlling the doctrine is allowing the insight and intuition to penetrate our minds and hearts. There is much to learn. We ought not injure the willingness to investigate and learn from what we cannot understand. No matter who brings the intuition or how the gift arrives before our consciousness, it is the gift itself that needs to be honored. We feast the gift of seeing things through.

Another saint, John of the Cross (1542-1591), had his own particular celebration of August 15th:
The friars of the house who deliberately came close to St. John's cell to torment him with their conversations hit upon a strategy that undoubtedly had a great effect on him. They said, "Let's throw him in a well and no one will ever see him again." While this, no doubt, had an initial depressive effect upon him, for it confirmed his fears about their wishes for his death, it also might have helped stimulate his desire for escape. He could not help but remember the incident in his childhood in which he had fallen into the pool and would have drowned save for the appearance of the beautiful lady. As the summer wore on, he received interior impulses urging him to escape. His first biographer states that this came in the form of a vision of the Blessed Virgin. Will the beautiful lady again play a role in extracting him from an impossible situation? On the Vespers of the feast of the Assumption he was praying in his cell with his head to the ground, and his back to the door, when the superior unexpectedly entered and kicked him since he had not immediately arisen. The prior asked what he had been thinking about, and John told him how much he would like to celebrate Mass on the Feast of the Assumption. The prior brusquely refused, and left. John was going to have to celebrate the Feast of the Assumption in his own way. After making careful preparations, one night during the octave of the Feast, he forced his door, carefully crept from his cell and lowered himself on a rope he had made from his torn-up blanket, and dropped into a courtyard. He had acted and made a definitive move, but his problems were not automatically solved. He discovered that the courtyard belonged to a neighboring convent of nuns, and he was filled with despair because he was afraid of the scandal that would be given to people if he were discovered there in the morning. He almost gave up and called to his captors to come and get him, but somehow he overrode this scrupulosity and hypersensitivity and managed to scramble up one of the walls. Ragged and dirty, he wandered through the streets of Toledo "at an hour when the life of all cities is mysterious and strange."(13) The vegetable women saw him passing through the plaza as they arranged their wares for the market, and thinking he was coming back from some revel, shouted out dirty words to him. Finally, he found refuge for the remainder of the night in the vestibule of a house, emerged in the morning and made his way to the Discalced Convent of sisters, and they hid him within the cloistered walls.

Finally his ordeal was over, and he made his way back to his own world. Almost literally the first thing he did, despite his weakness and the aftereffects of his physical and psychological trials was to recite his poems to the sisters. We have a moving picture of him barely able to stand, softly uttering for the first time to other human beings the essence of his prison experience.
(from St. John of the Cross and Dr. C.G. Jung, Mysticism in the Light of Jungian Psychology, Part III: A PSYCHOLOGICAL LIGHT ON JOHN OF THE CROSS AND THE LIFE OF PRAYER, CHAPTER 6: A TYPOLOGICAL PORTRAIT OF ST. JOHN) By James Arraj. 208pp, C.1986)

Thomas Merton writes about John of the Cross:
The last place in the world where one would imagine the Spiritual Canticle to have been written is a dungeon!

I will try to translate a little of it:

My Beloved is like the mountains.
Like the lonely valleys full of woods
The strange islands
The rivers with their sound
The whisper of the lovely air!

The night, appeased and hushed
About the rising of the dawn
The music stilled
The sounding solitude
The supper that rebuilds my life.
And brings me love.

Our bed of flowers
Surrounded by the lions' dens
Makes us a purple tent,
Is built of peace.
Our bed is crowned with a thousand shields of gold!

Fast-flying birds
Lions, harts and leaping does*
Mountains, banks and vales
Streams, breezes, heats of day
And terrors watching in the night:

By the sweet lyres and by the siren's song
I conjure you: let angers end!
And do not touch the wall
But let the bride be safe: let her sleep on!

* (Merton says, "I lift this line bodily from the translation of Professor E. Allison Peers.")

Only the saint and God can tell what distant echoes of an utterly alien everyday common life penetrated the darkness of the jail cell and the infinitely deep sleep of the peace in which his soul lay hidden in God. "Touch not the wall . . ." but the religious police could not disturb the ecstasy of one who had been carried so far that he was no longer troubled at the thought of being rejected even by the holy!
(http://www.cin.org/saints/jcross-merton.html)

Wherever the body goes, and whatever proclaimations made about the disappearances, may not be as interesting as the question whether true freedom, and true God, is being born through these mysteries.

Sri Aurobindo, in his book-length poem, writes:
This earth is full of labour, packed with pain;
Throes of an endless birth coerce her still;
The centuries end, the ages vainly pass
And yet the Godhead in her is not born.
The ancient Mother faces all with joy,
Calls for the ardent pang, the grandiose thrill;
For with pain and labour all creation comes.
This earth is full of the anguish of the gods;
Ever they travail driven by Time's goad,
And strive to work out the eternal Will
And shape the life divine in mortal forms.
His will must be worked out in human breasts
Against the Evil that rises from the gulfs,
Against the world's Ignorance and its obstinate strength,
Against the stumblings of man's pervert will,
Against the deep folly of his human mind,
Against the blind reluctance of his heart.
The spirit is doomed to pain till man is free.
There is a clamour of battle, a tramp, a march:
A cry arises like a moaning sea,
A desperate laughter under the blows of death,
A doom of blood and sweat and toil and tears.
Men die that man may live and God be born. ..." '
(Savitri -- A Legend and a Symbol, Pages: 442-4 ff.)

Finally, this meditation on August 15th turns to Dogen Zenji, founder of the Soto School of Zen. When someone is capable of seeing clearly, whatever their insight and intuition looks on -- that itself -- is seen clearly.

Genjo Koan, (an excerpt)

Firewood turns to ash, and does not turn into firewood again,
But do not suppose that ash is after and the firewood is before.
We must realize that firewood is in the state of being firewood,
And it has its before and after.
Yet despite this past and future,
Its present is independent of them.
Ash is in the state of being ash,
And it has its before and after.
Just as firewood does not become firewood again after it is ash,
So after one's death, one does not become life again.
Thus, that life does not become death
It is an unqualified fact of the Buddhadharma;
For this reason, life is called the non-born.
That death does not become life is the Buddha's
Revolving of the confirmed Dharma wheel;
Therefore, death is called the non-extinguished.
Life is a period of itself.
Death is a period of itself.
For example, they are like winter and spring.
We do not think that winter becomes spring,
Nor do we say that spring becomes summer.
(Written in mid-autumn of the first year of the Tempuku Era (1233 A.D. by Dogen Zenji)

Where do bodies go?

Watch carefully.

As we escape, revolve, long, belong, and become poetry through life -- we see ourselves through death and disappearance, entering the Invisible Itself, finally, with love.

Happy feast!

Time goes by.

A Camden woman's parents die within three months of each other. Elsewhere, a divorce is decided, but the kids haven't been told yet. A woman who's been a Catholic Sister for over forty years will marry a British chemist in a few weeks on the Connecticut shore. A younger couple from Bucksport have a baby shower at the shop today, they are expecting their first child. A couple in their fifties from Lincolnville return from China with a 10-month-old girl they've adopted. Hummingbird outside kitchen window browses buttercup.

Hidden birds sing as cool and clear
As a bamboo forest.
Between swinging willows sun beams glimmer
Like golden threads.
Clouds return to this calm valley.
The winds carry the fragrance of almonds.
By sitting alone all day long
I clear my mind of a thousand thoughts.
To speak of this is beyond our words;
Only by sitting under the quiet forest
Can we ever understand.
- Fa Yen (885-958)(DailyZen.com)

There's much I do not understand. Not the war. Not greed. Not love. Not even how electricity, x, or radio waves, much less micro waves, make their way into and through our homes and bodies. I don't understand the way most folks think about God. Nor do I understand why we place so much energy into time. Time is not nearly as interesting as the stillness that precedes tropical rain.

That odd statement -- "time is money" -- is incomprehensible to me.

The absence of time is presence. Presence has nothing to lose. Is that the vow of poverty? Is presence the promise of contemplation?

From Garrison Keillor's "Writer's Almanac for Sunday, August 14, 2005:

Literary and Historical Notes:
Today is the 60th anniversary of the day on which President Harry Truman announced that the Second World War had come to an end. You might argue that more human beings were happy on this day in 1945 than on any other day in history.

It was the worst war in history. An estimated 60 million people died; about two-thirds of them were civilians. In the United States, the war had been going on for three years and eight months. About one in every eight Americans served in the war—more than 16 million American soldiers. Virtually every American family had at least one member overseas. With 400,000 Americans killed, most families knew somebody who had died in the war, and the most American casualties had come in the last year of the war.

Most Americans had believed that the war was far from over. The first few battles on Japanese islands had been some of the bloodiest battles of the war. Military analysts were projecting horrific losses, casualty estimates in the hundreds of thousands. But after the atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Japanese suddenly accepted terms of complete surrender. And the announcement was made on this day at about 7:00 p.m. The newswires carried the headline, "Japan Surrenders."

There were spontaneous celebrations and parades in every major city in America. In New York City, more than a million people filled the street, overflowing Times Square, the crowd stretching from 40th all the way up to 52nd streets. Factories blew their whistles. Air raid sirens went off. Ships and trains and cars honked their horns. Churches tolled their bells.

Americans had been living under strict food and gas rationing, and once the news arrived, people went to the gas stations, filled up their cars and went riding around for the fun of it. Throughout the war, people had tried to keep their lights off after dark to save energy, but on this night, people turned on their lights and left them on all night. Some children who'd grown up during the war saw the streets lit up with lights for the first time.

And one thing that commentators noticed at the time was that nobody shouted, "We've won the war!" or anything about triumph. They simply shouted, "The war is over!"

My friend, soon to be married former sister, stopped running and darting as Paul appeared.
My friends, crossing old bridge and soon new bridge, come well to term.
My friends, back from China, nestle Ya Jia into her new home.
My friend, daughter without parents, sits on porch at sunset with their silence.
My friend, soon to move out of his home, holds open potentialities even as one actuality closes.

A melody floats without sound through the woodland.

"As Time Goes By"
(music and words by Herman Hupfeld)

[This day and age we're living in
Gives cause for apprehension
With speed and new invention
And things like fourth dimension.

Yet we get a trifle weary
With Mr. Einstein's theory.
So we must get down to earth at times
Relax relieve the tension

And no matter what the progress
Or what may yet be proved
The simple facts of life are such
They cannot be removed.]

You must remember this
A kiss is just a kiss, a sigh is just a sigh.
The fundamental things apply
As time goes by.

And when two lovers woo
They still say, "I love you."
On that you can rely
No matter what the future brings
As time goes by.

Moonlight and love songs
Never out of date.
Hearts full of passion
Jealousy and hate.
Woman needs man
And man must have his mate
That no one can deny.

It's still the same old story
A fight for love and glory
A case of do or die.
The world will always welcome lovers
As time goes by.

Oh yes, the world will always welcome lovers
As time goes by.
(© 1931 Warner Bros. Music Corporation, ASCAP)

Welcome -- all of us!

As time goes.

Bye.

We have to leave home. Home is where old familiar patterns of thinking and behavior hold us fixed.

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

The young man 15 years ago who borrowed my book about the old home town died that year of a drug overdose before he could give back the book. He could have kept it and read it again and again. But he went for something quicker.

Losing ego is often slow and undramatic. The suicide of ego by too much too pure a substance taken into body has high drama.

Michael tried and often succeeded in making people laugh. Tonight, watching Stephen Walker on C-Span book conversation talk about his new book Shockwave: Countdown to Hiroshima , I think of Michael, the Zen book, and Hiroshima. The combination stifles laughter.

I didn't laugh in 1945. I didn't laugh in 1990. The deaths were not funny.

The Zen book, on the other hand, was very funny. It pointed out how hilarious we really are.

Not really hilarious -- we're odd.

We know prayer, and don't.

Not yet.

Pray.

Now.

I've been thinking about Iraq. It is a shame.

George W. Bush has no strategy, no real plan, for winning the war in Iraq. So we're stuck in a murderous quagmire without even the suggestion of an end in sight.

The administration has never been straight with the public about the war, and there's no reason to believe it will start being honest now. There is a desperate need for a serious national conversation about alternatives to the Bush approach in Iraq, which is tantamount to a permanent American military presence in that country.

The president, ensconced in a long vacation, exemplifies the vacuum of leadership on this crucial issue, which demands nothing less than the sustained attention of the wisest men and women the U.S. has to offer. They could be politicians, academics, civic or religious leaders, corporate executives - whoever. The longer they remain on the sidelines, the longer the carnage in Iraq will continue.
(--from: "No End in Sight in Iraq," By Bob Herbert, Published: August 10, 2005, N.Y.Times)

When R.D.Laing, in his Politics of Experience, wrote about the distinction between being "out of formation" versus "off course" he gave shape to the current situation. Mr. Bush and his administration's policies are (in general, in my opinion) off course.

Off course, and heading for a greater disaster than already occurring. It no longer matters that the nation was deceived in the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq; what matters is to cut off the deception as it hurdles to a more profound destruction. It doesn't matter that some think Mr. Bush's intentions and motivations are not honorable; what matters is to cut off unworthy foolhardiness from extending any further. It doesn't matter that some are only now figuring out that neo-con stated and written strategy to redo the Middle East was in fact a plan of attack; what matters is the necessity of stopping these people from carrying out their brazen and irresponsible behavior in the name of American democracy.

I'd rather we simply relieve them of their office -- put them out to retirement to spend their war profits away from the sight of our children.

There is no honor perpetuating shame by continuing off course just because you are already off course.

Psychiatrist R.D. Laing wrote about schizophrenia in a way that might have relevance for the no place to go, no move to make check-mate position we find ourselves in when looking at the bizarre behavior of this administration and experiencing wild bewilderment at it:
"It is the fact that man does not experience himself as the active bearer if his own powers and richness, but as an impoverished "thing", dependent on powers outside if himself, onto whom he has projected his living substance."

The validity of a definition is ultimately determined by the identity of the one who is defining. It is in this context that Laing argues: "There is no such 'condition' as 'schizophrenia,' but the label is a social fact and the social fact a political event." Seen from this radical perspective, all our definitions may have to be turned upside down and inside out. "What we call 'normal' is", according to Laing "a product of repression, denial, splitting, projection, introjection and other forms of destructive action on experience.... It is radically estranged from the structure of being." No wonder, then, that "the condition of alienation, of being asleep, of being unconscious, of being out of one's mind, is the condition of the normal man." On the other hand schizophrenia may be seen as an alienation from this alienation, where, "even through his profound wretchedness and disintegration", the patient may be "the heirophant of the sacred". Finally, "madness need not be all breakdown. It may also be break-through. It is potential liberation and renewal as well as enslavement and existential death."
(from "R.D. Laing:The Politics of the Mind," by Peter Levine; http://laingsociety.org/colloquia/peaceconflict/divisions.levine.htm)

We've got to get out of this place!

Someone has to wake up.

We must befriend Being.

Endgame, anyone?

Even Clare of Assisi, whose feast is celebrated today, confronted the powers that took lives and threatened the well-being of innocent people.

Clare loved music and well-composed sermons. She was humble, merciful, charming, optimistic, and chivalrous. She would get up late at night to tuck in her sisters who'd kicked off their covers. She daily meditated on the Passion. When she learned of the Franciscan martyrs in Morocco in 1221, she tried to go there to give her own life for God, but was restrained. Once when her convent was about to be attacked, she displayed the Sacrament in a monstrance at the convent gates, and prayed before it; the attackers left. (CLARE of Assisi, http://www.catholic-forum.com/saints/saintc03.htm)

Today the living theater of peace and justice is still active. A mother whose son died in Iraq waits to speak with the man who sent him there. She camps out down the road from the ranch of George W. Bush in Crawford Texas.

It is an important conversation she wants to have with the politician and commander in chief. She wants to further explore the thinking and intent that sent her son to die. It is necessary for her and Mr. Bush to explore her son Casey's whole life -- and George Bush's whole life.
"When a man dies, it's not only of his disease; he dies of his whole life." (-Charles Peguy)

Dear Cindy Sheehan,
In the morning we silently sit in our meditation cabin, then chant morning prayer.
You are in our silence and our prayer. As is your son.

Thank you for presenting yourself, You inspire us with hope.
We wish you well in your vigil. Stay as long as your heart allows.

Then return home, at peace.
With our gratitude,

Bill and Saskia
Meetingbrook Hermitage
Camden, Maine

Sheehan writes from Crawford:
We are working for peace with justice. We are using peaceful means and the truth to do it. I guess the truth frightens people. It frightens them so much, they have to resort to telling lies to rebut my arguments.
The Peaceful Occupation of Crawford (Day 5); -- a message from Cindy Sheehan, Crawford, TX

Last year, this:
Cindy Sheehan Is Working To Bring Our Troops Home: "Mr. President. You have daughters. How would you feel if one of them was killed?"
A BUZZFLASH INTERVIEW
Casey Sheehan re-enlisted with the Army in August of 2003, knowing that his unit would eventually be deployed in Iraq. Casey, a Humvee mechanic with the 1st Calvary, was killed in Sadr City on April 4th of this year. He was only 24 years old. He is and forever will remain an American hero.
Casey's mom, Cindy Sheehan, is a hero too. Angered that her son was sent to fight and die in an unjust war for reasons that have proven to be lies, Cindy is speaking out about the Iraq invasion. Cindy has joined other moms and families who have lost loved ones in the conflict to tell Americans about the true costs of the war. (October 7, 2004)

Three days ago, this:
CRAWFORD, Tex., Aug. 7 - President Bush draws antiwar protesters just about wherever he goes, but few generate the kind of attention that Cindy Sheehan has since she drove down the winding road toward his ranch here this weekend and sought to tell him face to face that he must pull all Americans troops out of Iraq now.
(August 8, 2005, "Of the Many Deaths in Iraq, One Mother's Loss Becomes a Problem for the President," By RICHARD W. STEVENSON, The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/08/politics/08crawford.html)

It is a profound hope, and an emerging realistic expectation, that truth and transparency will become the prevailing way of being in the world. Why not -- it is the way freedom and love emerge into the world -- and we want freedom and love, truth and transparency. Don't we?

Like the little stream
Making its way
Through the mossy crevices,
I, too, quietly
Turn clear and transparent.
- Hakuin (1686-1768)

Clare, Cindy -- help us, too, quietly turn clear and transparent.

Show us the monstrance of sacred presence.

You could be led to believe it is a normal day. Red Sox win. Yankees lose. Four soldiers and a marine killed in Iraq. Oil company gets millions in tax breaks after a 7.64 billion profit this quarter.

Each night I gaze upon a pond,
A Zen body sitting beside a moon.
Nothing is really there and yet
It is all so clear and bright
I cannot describe it.
If you would know the empty mind
Your own mind must be as clear and bright
As this full moon upon the water.
- Chiao Jan (785--895)

It is an odd war. Only our soldiers are at war. The rest of America goes on vacation. The president refuses to speak to a mother of a soldier killed in Iraq. She camps by his ranch.

Let's stop it. War and the pretense of war cannot be accepted as normal. It is anything but normal. Let's stop pretending the unlovely is lovely.

Let's be rid of unlovely pretense.

Sit Shiva. Resurrect love. Remember when we cared about truth.

The sky holds both clear mind and clouded mind.

The Feast of Nagasaki. I am thrown into solitude. There, innumerable (though silent) imprecations come as faint breeze on hot afternoon to this mind. Alternately, alone, the sense that imbecilic impulses pull the world to pick at scar-tissue scabs, threatening to up the ante of posturing again with nuclear weapons.

The concurrent brook-beds, dry and unmoving this hot August, take my attention -- namely, monastic creation mind, over against, military destruction mind.

Don't say that only clear water mirrors the moon.
Muddy water also reflects the sky.
Watch, after wind has settled and the waves are calm,
For a wonderful moon, as lovely as before.
- Lin Chi Chung (1119)

Mac, a Trappist monk, tells a guest at his monastery about the tension and spectrum in monasteries between solitude and solidarity. "God plants the seeds of a monk in everyone's soul at the moment of creation." The visitor writes about movements throughout history, whether Buddhist, pre-Christian, Jewish, Pythagorean, or Christian -- that proves Mac's point.

In Mac's opinion, those manifestations proved the existence of a universal monk, an archetype that exists in every human being. Everyone experiences the call to solitude. Sometimes, Mac said, God calls softly, as on those occasions we might simply feel a casual craving for time alone. "Why do you suppose those moments of solitude offer us such relief?" Mac asked. they give us a chance to simply be ourselves, to enjoy what and where we were, to savor just being. Alone with God, we feel no need to perform, to do. The pressure is off. That good, refreshing feeling is nothing less than an experience of God's accepting love. It is the healing power of an eternal passion that is consummated in the reunion of creature and Creator. God is delighted by our act of will in which we love and place ourselves in his presence."
"That devine-delight is the lover who draws each of us back and forth between two poles, the loving opportunities of solitude and solidarity. Sometimes God recharges our batteries one-on-one, in solitude. Other times, he kindles our longing for him in the rest of creation and we wind up falling in love, or elbow-to-elbow with our fellow humans, awash in the joy of a celebration with friends or family. He pulls us to him in either circumstance for however long he believes is necessary.
"Alone with him in solitude, we see and learn what we uniquely are,and how that is all we ever need be. Nothing more. We grow secure in the understanding love that self-knowledge represents."
(pp.33-34, chapter entitled "The Monk in Us All," in Voices of Silence, Lives of the Trappists Today, by Frank Bianco, c.1991)

Because we do not know ourselves -- real knowledge of real self -- we continue to attempt to destroy those who do not think like us, indeed, are not us.

We need a more profound myth about who and what we are.

"Every thought system has at its core a guiding myth not a myth in the sense of a lie but of an imaginative vision, a picture which does indeed `express its appeal to the deepest needs of our nature'" (p. 200; in Mary Midgley's Science and Poetry; quoting E.O.Wilson).

The Feast of Nagasaki confronts an old myth, an old lie.

On August 9 1945 an American B-29 Bockscar aircraft dropped a 4.5 tonne bomb on the city, killing at least 80,000 people in the world's second nuclear attack.

Three days previously, the US air force had dropped a similar device on the city of Hiroshima, killing 140,000 people in the immediate blast and in the following months from radiation sickness. Japan surrendered on August 15 1945, bringing an end to the second world war.

After the minute's silence today, Japan's prime minister, Junichiro Koizumi, laid a wreath at the monument to the dead. "This is an occasion to remember the victims, and pray for world peace," he said.

The mayor of Nagasaki, Iccho Itoh, then made an angry appeal - aimed particularly at Washington - for a global ban on nuclear weapons.

"We understand your anger and anxiety over the memories of the horror of the 9-11 terrorist attacks," he said. "Yet, is your security enhanced by your government's policies of maintaining 10,000 nuclear weapons, of carrying out repeated sub-critical nuclear tests, and of pursuing the development of new 'mini' nuclear weapons?"
Fumie Sakamoto, a representative of the survivors of the Nagasaki bomb, said: "Together with some 260,000 survivors ... I swear in the presence of the souls of the victims of the atomic bombing to continue to tirelessly demand that Nagasaki be the last A-bomb site."

Ms Sakamoto, 74, was a junior high school student when Nagasaki was bombed. The blast destroyed her home, throwing her 10 metres into the air. She landed in her garden. "As far as I could see, everything had been reduced to rubble," she said.
Following the bombings, many hibakusha - a Japanese term for "bomb affected people" - suffered the effects of radiation exposure, including malignant tumours, leukaemia, and keloid scars.

Nagasaki was not intended as the original target for the atomic bomb. The US bomber had been heading to Kokura, but the city was covered with thick cloud on the day. The plane circled three times before changing course for Nagasaki.

When it arrived, Nagasaki too was covered in cloud. With dwindling fuel supplies, the pilot was about to turn back when a break in the cloud appeared.
(from "Nagasaki remembers" in Guardian Unlimited, Staff and agencies, Tuesday August 9, 2005)

The clouds of Kokura saved the city. Were some leaving their houses that morning unhappy that there were clouds?

Muddy water also reflects the sky. Clouds, whether physical or metaphorical, keep the mind humble -- causing it to ask: What is this? Are we safe? Or in danger? Are we who we are?

Clouds shape the sky as they do the mind.

Hegel wrote: Dass das Sein Denken ist ("Being is thinking"), that "the spiritual alone is the real," and that only those generalities with which we deal in thinking actually are. (In Preface to the Phenomenology of Mind, by Georg Hegel)

These visitors are spiritually here. Today, the Feast of Nagasaki, like the Feast of Hiroshima, brings them to mind, to being -- here.

We wander Kokura -- in solitude and solidarity -- mostly sunshine, yet still (happily), clouds. This is the tension and the spectrum of being-in-the-world, and, thinking the world into being.

The Japanese word said before meals applies to this meal of ambiguity we partake -- Itadakimasu -- "All this I will gratefully receive".

Domo Arigato Gozaimasu!

Not knowing is a way of life. On the other hand, birth and death are familiar.

In the winter of 1916 I found myself in St. Petersburg with a forged passport and not a cent to my name. Alexey Kazantsev, a teacher of Russian literature, took me into his house. (Opening lines of "Guy De Maupassant," 1932 short story by Isaac Babel, trans by Raymond Rosenthal and Waclaw Solski.)

In the summer of 1944 I don't know where I was. Katherine and Frank lived with Sarah and Tom who'd opened their house on 69th street to Nellie and Jim. Patricia was two when I moved in -- or fell through -- at Israel Zion on 48th street and 10th avenue.

Maimonides Medical Center began as a small community hospital in 1911. At the time, a farm region known as New Utrecht was on the way to becoming a residential neighborhood called Borough Park. To care for the medical needs of local residents, neighborhood women founded the New Utrecht Dispensary. In 1918, Jewish-sponsored medical facilities in the area consolidated. As a result, United Israel Zion Hospital was formed laying the foundation for the creation of Maimonides Hospital of Brooklyn in 1947.
In 2004, the hospital had approximately 80,000 ER visits, 33,000 inpatient discharges, and delivered over 6,400 babies, the most of any hospital in New York State. (http://www.drgnyc.com/current_searches/printsearch.cfm?jobID=158)

Frank and Kay's boy joined the household on Bay Ridge Avenue where Staddy smoked White Owl cigars sitting on his wood chair in back yard in front of former barn; Nellie whirled her sewing machine in upstairs back room overlooking white DeSoto in yard; Sadie stirred and heated kidney stew in basement kitchen like a grandmother conductor coaxing in stray notes; Tom sharpened his Brotherhood of Railroad Trainmen pencils from his Pennsylvania Railroad days; and Pat skipped rope with the girls on the block until it was time for supper.

In 1966 Jo-Ann was sitting on the ground in a circle of sisters and brothers in a schoolyard in Portsmouth N.H. when her face shone love to any eyes looking. Mine were. I was transfixed.

Inside the sacred fence
Before which I bow
There must be a pond
Filled with clear water;
As my mind-moon becomes bright
I see its shadow reflected in the water.
- Daito Kokushi

Everything goes its own way to wind up where it will be. I don't know where I will be. The moon and water, I suspect, always show up and disappear -- just in time to be seen in passing by someone looking at something else. I was there outside the circle, outside the fence of who I thought I was, when she smiled. That fence collapsed. Dew took to morning grass, moon to other side of world, and smile embedded itself in forty years of fondness. I must have thought, "I know where you will always be, but I don't know where I will be."

Last evening five humans, two dogs, and a cat sat, walked, chanted, read, silented, ate, and spoke aloud at Sunday Evening Practice. The loveliness of bringing back those gone or gone beyond was acknowledged with tenderness and love. Julian told a story told him by a Benedictine Prioress about an unvisited gravesite of a sister whose many years before her death were spent in a psychiatric hospital. Saskia spoke about how we bring back into wholeness those we remember in presence. Tina spoke of spiritual pregnancy and the curious mystery of what might be born from it. Sylvia spoke of the need to share our thinking so as not to be burdened alone with its weight -- a midwifery of community.

In middle autumn of 2000, when Pat gave over her breath, my early household was now all gone.

Just before we began last evening, Jo-Ann called to say she will be married. (This morning the cat, on my lap, stretches with closed eyes, does not let on whether he hears the bird chirping on cedar branch outside the window.) I let on -- I delight in my friend's revelation.

Still, I don't know where I am. It is the birthday of my parent's only son. I join the quiet celebration.

Of birth, of death -- with these I am familiar.

Of life -- of this fantastic dwelling -- I am in awe.

We are taken, in and through, this house.

First holding. Then unholding.

Finally, beholding.

The hour is sticking so close above me, so clear and sharp, that all my senses ring with it. I feel it now; there's a power in me to grasp and give shape to my world.

I know that nothing has ever been real without my beholding it. All becoming has needed me. My looking ripens things and they come towards me, to meet and be met.

No thing is too small for me to cherish and paint in gold, as if it were an icon that could bless us, though I'll now know who else among us will feel this blessing.
(from poem of Rilke's, translated by Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy)

Now knowing, as well, is a lovely way.

What is our true sound?

Is it possible we have not yet even begun to hear our true sound, the sound of authentic being? Does this hearing impairment hinder us from listening to others? Can we hear anything real without an intense longing and effort to try?

One and the same breeze passes
Over the pines on the mountain
And the oak trees in the valley;
And why do they give different notes?
- Shinkage-ryu school of swordsmanship

This weekend bridges the two dates, August 6th and August 9th, of the two Atomic Bombs dropped on Japan in 1945. In Hiroshima and in Nagasaki we learned that there is no limit to what some people will do to others to cause pain, suffering, and death. We no longer believe the rationale. There is no reason that adequately excuses the unleashing of such destruction. Those offered over the years -- end war, minimize invasion casualties, show Russia our weapon, do it because we could, -- these are vacant rationalizations with heartless consequences.

The Official Homepage of Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum contains the Peace Declaration, August 6, 2005. Here is a fragment:

This August 6, the 60th anniversary of the atomic bombing, is a moment of shared lamentation in which more than 300 thousand souls of A-bomb victims and those who remain behind transcend the boundary between life and death to remember that day. It is also a time of inheritance, of awakening, and of commitment, in which we inherit the commitment of the hibakusha to the abolition of nuclear weapons and realization of genuine world peace, awaken to our individual responsibilities, and recommit ourselves to take action. This new commitment, building on the desires of all war victims and the millions around the world who are sharing this moment, is creating a harmony that is enveloping our planet.

The keynote of this harmony is the hibakusha warning, "No one else should ever suffer as we did," along with the cornerstone of all religions and bodies of law, "Thou shalt not kill." Our sacred obligation to future generations is to establish this axiom, especially its corollary, "Thou shalt not kill children," as the highest priority for the human race across all nations and religions. The International Court of Justice advisory opinion issued nine years ago was a vital step toward fulfilling this obligation, and the Japanese Constitution, which embodies this axiom forever as the sovereign will of a nation, should be a guiding light for the world in the 21st century.

Unfortunately, the Review Conference of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty this past May left no doubt that the U.S., Russia, U.K., France, China, India, Pakistan, North Korea and a few other nations wishing to become nuclear-weapon states are ignoring the majority voices of the people and governments of the world, thereby jeopardizing human survival.

Based on the dogma "Might is right," these countries have formed their own "nuclear club," the admission requirement being possession of nuclear weapons. Through the media, they have long repeated the incantation, "Nuclear weapons protect you." With no means of rebuttal, many people worldwide have succumbed to the feeling that "There is nothing we can do." Within the United Nations, nuclear club members use their veto power to override the global majority and pursue their selfish objectives.
(http://www.pcf.city.hiroshima.jp/declaration/English/2005/index.html)

The sound of green on leaf this summer's day. The sound of birdcall in wooded shade. The sound of breeze crossing mountain top in high sunlight.

When we pray, words carry the watchful sounds of many who have suffered and died.

So it is we sit with silence. So it is we humbly dare to give voice to word.

So it is we profoundly ask all-that-is to help one another, to be safe, to allow each to dwell at home with peace.

To each, with love, their true sound.

A reverent silence.

It's hard to believe what you see. It's hard believing anything. Most things turn out to be somewhere between no-way and get-lost.

He was still speaking when suddenly a bright cloud covered them with shadow, and from the cloud there came a voice which said, "This is my Son, the Beloved; he enjoys my favour. Listen to him." When they heard this the disciples fell on their faces overcome with fear. But Jesus came up and touched them. "Stand up," he said "do not be afraid." And when they raised their eyes they saw no one but only Jesus. (from Matthew 17)

Jesus seen through. Japanese seen through. The odd juxtaposition of August 6th -- Transfiguration, and Hiroshima Atomic Bomb blast. The transparency.

ii

Dark house, by which once more I stand
Here in the long unlovely street,
Doors, where my heart was used to beat
So quickly, waiting for a hand,

A hand that can be clasped no more --
Behold me, for I cannot sleep,
And like a guilty thing I creep
At earliest morning to the door.

He is not here; but far away
The noise of life begins again,
And ghastly through the drizzling rain
On the bald street breaks the blank day.
(Poem: excerpts from "In Memorium" by Alfred, Lord Tennyson)

What's odd is the emptiness.

Holding my jacket and facing the fragrant peony,
I sense how different our viewpoints are.
Someday our hair will turn gray,
Yet the flowers will be this red each year;
Following the morning dew, each blooms gorgeously
Then their sweet scent is chased by the evening winds.
Why wait till they have withered and fallen
To understand such emptiness?
- Fa Yen (885–958)

To see through and be seen through is to be empty.

The beauty of the memorium and the ugliness of so many incinerated -- stuns mind into emptiness.

The oddity that one of us is God -- that each one of us just might be -- shuts down comprehension.

It is not enough to hate the mind that chooses, and the act that commits, murder.

We look on ourselves, in each form, and weep.

Love the emptiness.

For sixty years a belief there was no alternative to dropping the bomb on Hiroshima.

I don't share that belief. Absent this non-believer. A child nearly one year old, the feeling of horror found its way to Brooklyn streets.

If your ears see,
And eyes hear,
Not a doubt you'll cherish
How naturally the rain drips
From the eaves!
- Daito Kokushi

That long ago remains close tonight. If my hand could I would stay the order, un-push the button, and find some hint of genuine compassion for those below a terrible idea.

I call off the bombing of Hiroshima sixty years ago.

Tomorrow will be a day of grace and kindness.

A toast -- to you, my brothers and sisters!

Communion is a better idea.

Itadaki-masu!

It is hard to tell if anyone is saying anything anymore.

So many listening ears, so many watching eyes. It hardly seems necessary to explain why the teaching someone follows needs to be spoken aloud. If the teaching isn't in his or her silence, what use sounding it?

Soundless Sound

I like bamboo as the symbol of constancy and simplicity.
I built my house deep within the grove.
Do not strike my bamboo with a piece of brick.
Perhaps the sound might be heard by other Zen monks
And cause trouble.
- Jakushitsu (1290 - 1368)

I suspect a time approaches when even the most garrulous will comprehend the uselessness of the words and sounds made to convince others of the insight and advancement of the speaker. (Some say there is no advance, there is no place to be gotten to quicker; there is only here. There is nowhere to go. Each is already in their own place.)

Soon silence will have passed into legend. Man has turned his back on silence. Day after day he invents machines and devices that increase noise and distract humanity from the essence of life, contemplation, meditation.... Tooting, howling, screeching, booming, crashing, whistling, grinding, and trilling bolster his ego. His anxiety subsides. His inhuman void spreads monstrously like a gray vegetation.
(--Jean Arp (1887 - 1948), French-German artist, poet. "Sacred Silence," On My Way, ed. Robert Motherwell (1948).)

As that day approaches, silence will allow man to go his noisy way. With man gone off to the extreme edges of deafening polemic, there remains in the center silence in every sound. Even in the soundless pause between sounds -- a rich quietude resides in interim.

Preserve silence.

Observe it visiting here.

As it is...on its way...nowhere else.

Chapels are places for prayer and respite.

Before the night is even through,
I rise and sit,
Watching fireflies.
The night air clear as water,
The meditating mind
Is light as a reed.
The moon outlines
Trees on the western ridge;
A bell rouses
Home up above.
There may be those in the dark
Who know just how fine
Is what I have found.
- Wen-siang (1210-1280)

I fall from the odd news of the world. What sense there is in the ways of the world -- escapes me these days.

Francis was now attracted to a tiny chapel known as St. Mary of the Portiuncula, belonging to a Benedictine monastery on Monte Subasio. It stood in the wooded plain, some two miles below Assisi, forsaken and in ruins. Francis rebuilt it as he had done the others, and seems to have thought of spending his life there as a hermit, in peace and seclusion. Here on the feast of St. Matthias, in 1209, the way of life he was to follow was revealed to him. The Gospel of the Mass for this day was Matthew X, 7-19: "And going, preach, saying The Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.... Freely have you received, freely give. Take neither gold nor silver nor brass in your purses . . . nor two coats nor shoes nor a staff.... Behold I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves...." These words suddenly became Christ's direct charge to him. His doubts over, he cast off shoes, staff, and leathern girdle, but kept his rough woolen coat, which he tied about him with a rope. This was the habit he gave his friars the following year. In this garb he went to Assisi the next morning and, with a moving warmth and sincerity, began to speak to the people he met on the shortness of life, the need of repentance, and the love of God. His salutation to those he passed on the road was, "Our Lord give you peace." (http://www.ewtn.com/library/MARY/FRANCIS.htm)

Lets make chapels our first visit. Make chapels of ourselves.

Make bells the threshold of silence.

Of loving prayer.

After silent sitting, meditative walking, and chanting of Heart Sutra, we bow and prepare to leave the chapel/zendo.

Extinguishing the candle that lights the icon of Mary and Jesus in the cabin after first part of Sunday Evening Practice, I think of the insight during a half-hour cycling exercise in front room of hermitage facing similar icon while listening to Dalai Lama healing chant from middle room. I am suddenly aware that the words below cabin icon – “Mother of God, Light in all Darkness” – have a reference I’d not thought of before.

The reference is to the combination of Mary and Jesus – not to Mary alone, as if Jesus were a prop for purposes of lending legitimacy to the woman and mother. No, the icon is of both of them, equally chosen and equally represented as relational iconography. Is this an icon of a new reality? This reality emerges by means of pregnancy, birth, and offspring. This new reality is interim. It is the middle emergence that holds and permits continuance through an unbroken and unceasing wholeness that involves each of us and everything going on.

The icon invites the observer, especially the praying observer, into the sequential circumference of pregnancy, birth, and offspring as center, radial energy, and spiral wholeness.

The “Mother of God” in this observation is the relational sequence of Mary/Jesus. This sequence of Mary/Jesus is the Mother of God. It is also the sequence of each of us as we attend prayerfully that-which-is unfolding in this existence. I say “in this existence” because we begin where we are and we need to be here while we are here.

The wording of threes, namely: “that-which-is”, or, things “as-they-are”, or, something “as-it-is” – begins to emerge more and more frequently as descriptive of simple and ultimate reality.

To investigate that-which-is invites inquiry and experience to encounter what is there with willing mind and open heart.
To face things as-they-are is to face reality without illusions.
To accept someone or something as-it-is is to surrender to and into the reality before us.

A monk from a Catholic community of hermits visiting at table said that Marian devotion had changed in that he had a strong understanding of Jesus the Christ as mother. A woman who had attended a Bat Mitsva the day before related that the Rabbi (a woman) said that the Hebrew word for “compassion” and “mercy” was the same as for “womb.”

It is here the sequence takes shape and makes sense. There has been a tension in Catholic theology as to the place of Mary. There have been impulses to have her take on the role that the Goddess plays in spirituality. There have been attempts to define her role as co-redemptrix, mother of God, or even the feminine third person in the metaphor of the Trinity. It seems Catholic Christians are never quite sure what to think of their Marys.

But in the quiet evening cycling, and in extinguishing cabin candle, it occurs that part of the mystery is in the threefold sequence of pregnancy, birth, and offspring -- a sequence which is a never-ending revelation spiraling up from and beyond things as-they-are. It is the way earthly existence and human emergence contribute to the coming to be of consciousness relating to the reality of what is called God.

Jesus/Mary is the Mother of God.

Like a Zen koan – not one, not two – only, Jesus/Mary.

Father is Life Itself.
Mother is Jesus/Mary.
Spirit is Making-Its-Way-Through-Us.

The question emerges -- Who are we in this revelation?

A circumference "carries round."

The soup and bread, as usual, were delicious.

Thich Nhat Hanh’s words, as usual, were nourishing.

The simple circle of mindful gatherers was, as usual, blessing.

Sunday morning news programs do not encourage. Congress passes legislation that makes us long for individuals now that most grease, pork, and boons go to corporations and their lobbying legal partners and patrons. So much talk; so little said.

I might have to listen more closely to those who say it doesn't matter. Even the most conservative and most liberal of folks hereabouts are beginning to look at government and realize the so-called red-blue (conservative-liberal) split so touted and loved by politicians and commentators is illusory -- a public deception. It is not a war of ideas, nor a war between religions that is being fought. It is a matter of money. Who has it, who wants it, who has the power to keep it where it is? Sometimes money has a hard sound to it.

When a country is in harmony with the Tao,
the factories make trucks and tractors.
When a country goes counter to the Tao,
warheads are stockpiled outside the cities.

There is no greater illusion than fear,
no greater wrong than preparing to defend yourself,
no greater misfortune than having an enemy.

Whoever can see through all fear
will always be safe.
(#46, Lao Tzu, in Tao Te Ching, trans. by Stephen Mitchell)

I don't think it is a matter of money. I think it is something else. I think we have forgotten what it means to be. Being, to be at all, is a silence with remarkable sounds and stillness.

It is a matter of Being. And we have forgotten Being. For religious folks, this translates that we have forgotten God. So many for so long have gotten used to fighting over the ideas and their political implications we have about God, fighting about a notion of God that arranges power and control in the hands of those for whom power and control are the only things of true value. God Itself -- with nothing added -- has been forgotten.

Some say it would be good if we forgot about God entirely. Forgot about religion. Forgot about anything that is not real, here, and now.

The Master has no mind of her own.
She works with the mind of the people.

She is good to people who are good.
She is also good to people who aren't good.
This is true goodness.

She trusts people who are trustworthy.
She also trusts people who aren't trustworthy.
This is true trust.

The Master's mind is like space.
People don't understand her.
They look to her and wait.
She treats them like her own children.
(#49, Lao Tzu, in Tao Te Ching, trans. by Stephen Mitchell)

The heart does not break when we look at suffering. The heart deepens into Itself.

Silence

Sometimes we don't say anything. Sometimes
we sit on the deck and stare at the masses of
goldenrod where the garden used to be
and watch the color change from day to day,
the high yellow turning to mustard and at last
to tarnish. Starlings flitter in the branches
of the dead hornbeam by the fence. And are these
therefore the procedures of defeat? Why am I
saying all this to you anyway since you already
know it? But of course we always tell
each other what we already know. What else?
It's the way love is in a late stage of the world.
(Poem: "Silence" by Hayden Carruth, from Collected Shorter Poems ©. Copper Canyon Press.)

We need to turn again.

To Being.

And ask, with silence: How should I be?

Perhaps the dead have an advantage. It is possible they see and are seen through in a way that the living cannot. The living continue to think they have something to hide, something to prove, and something they are not ready to see.

Revelation

We make ourselves a place apart
Behind light words that tease and flout,
But oh, the agitated heart
Till someone find us really out.

'Tis pity if the case require
(Or so we say) that in the end
We speak the literal to inspire
The understanding of a friend.

But so with all, from babes that play
At hide-and-seek to God afar,
So all who hide too well away
Must speak and tell us where they are.
(Poem by Robert Frost)

So many of those alive cannot be seen. They hide behind opinions, history, roles, and fears.

Perhaps the dead have no opinions, exist only now, without a role to play, with nothing to fear.

We must reconsider death.

While alive, to pass through death every minute, until the space-between -- the passageway -- reveals the benefits of death in life.

Benefits?

Of passing through.

There is no place apart.

Where shall I wander? Tyler delivered envelope with proposed new rent for our shop at the harbour. It's not lower. (That, and the expectation monthly rent be exchanged in a timely manner -- imagine!) It puts John Ashbery's book and poem before mind.

Composition

We used to call it the boob tube,
but I guess they don't use tubes anymore.
Whatever, it serves a small purpose after waking
and before falling asleep. Today's news --
but is there such a thing as news,
or even oral history? Yes, when you want to go back
after a while and appraise the accumulation
of leaves, say in a sandbox.
The rest is rented depression,
available only in season
and the season is always next month,
a pure but troubled time.

That's why I don't go out much, though
staying at home never seemed much of an option.
And speaking of nutty concepts, surely "home"
is way up there on the list. I feel more certain about "now"
and "then," because they are close to me,
like lovers, though apparently not in love with me,
as I am with them. I like to call to them,
and sometimes they reply, out of the deep business of some dream.
(Poem: "Composition" by John Ashbery, from Where Shall I Wander)

I don't go out much. Except for daily to the shop, weekly for tutoring and Meetingbrook Conversations to the state prison, driving the distance of Maine with Saskia as she does audits, and the twice weekly trips to teach university courses in Thomaston or Warren. Aside from these forays -- as well as hikes around and across Ragged Mountain -- I don't go out much.

John Ashbery said, "I've always felt myself to be a rather frustrated composer who was trying to do with words what musicians are able to do with notes."

Like Ashbery, I've always felt myself to be a hermit wandering the edges of the monastery that is the world. It is like Fr. Theophane the Monk's work, Tales of a Magic Monastery. The tale I hear says world is monastery. That story is a template that experiences Benedictine, Franciscan, and Zen versions of hospitable listening, natural sanctity, and grounded seeing. We are monastics wandering cloistered passageways through the sanctity of everydayness.

Besides, where is there to go? We've heard it said that wherever we go, there we are.

Last evening's conversation followed the reading of Thich Nhat Hanh's 14 Precepts and the next chapter from Peace is Every Step, The River. We noted that interconnectedness and intimate compassion just might be the natural condition of contemporary humanity. We surmised that it might be extra work for us to attempt to detach and separate ourselves from innate and inchoate connection -- extra effort to forge a hiatus between what we consider to be our thinking commanding self and the feeling interpenetrating self we actually are.

Now and then we fall into what we are. That falling is gift. In that fall there is no escaping and no regretting what and who we are. It is liberating. There we are, right at the center of the universe. But not alone.

"each of us is at the center of the universe.so is everyone else." -- e.e. cummings

I wander where I am. Wonder has come to wander.

Don't look anywhere for me or for yourself.

Just wander about.

Nearing.

Home.

Walking mountain trail on Ragged is an extension of drive to Lincoln Maine, then Veazie to pick up Tunturi exercise bike advertised in Uncle Henry's, followed at dusk in dust cutting branches from roadside bushes and dooryard intrusions.

The wind blows through my tiny hermitage,
Not one thing is in the room.
Outside, a thousand cedars;
On the wall, several poems are written.
Now the kettle is covered with dust,
And no smoke rises from the rice steamer.
Who is pounding at my moonlit gate?
Only an old man from East Village.
- Ryokan (1758-1831)

The fantastic story told by Brown's Da Vinci Code on History Channel is watched with chocolate ice cream.

I think about the icon and template of hermit.

The hermit is not one who lives alone without others.

The hermit is one who is with others when alone and alone when with others.

Undetached and intimately aloof, the hermit is the knitting of sacred silence with what-is-between one and all.

Taking in any knitting, dear?

It is a fool's errand to prove a negative. But, what-is-real -- that's a horse of a different color.

Every thought is Buddha mind;
Buddha mind dwells on Buddha.
If you wish to accomplish this soon,
Be vigilant and disciplined
If you wish to seek Buddhahood,
Don't stain a single thing.
Though the nature of mind is empty,
Greed and hatred are real.
- Master Fu (497-569)

Journalists are asking "What did Bush know? And when did he know it?" Along with Frank Rich's op-ed piece in today's New York Times, "Eight Days in July" -- there are increasing signs it is time for reckoning.

We all remember Dorothy getting by the blustering doorman at the entrance to the Emerald City by the skin of her Ruby Slippers, and hailing a carriage drawn by a horse whose color keeps changing. "What kind of a horse is that? I've never seen a horse like that before!" she exclaims. To which the cabbie replies, "No, and never will again, I fancy. There's only one of him, and he's it. He's the Horse of a Different Color you've heard tell about." The cabbie is referring to an expression used when you encounter something significantly different from what is expected--you say that it's a horse of a different (or another) color.
(http://www.randomhouse.com/wotd/index.pperl?date=20010430)

Two years ago the anguish of many at what was felt to be lies and distortions leading the United States into a reckless action in Iraq is now changing from anguish to cautious unveiling -- and accompanying sorrow -- that a willing people were misled by a willful administration into unnecessary war and repercussions worldwide..

It is passing curious, on a related plane, that I will be assigning the novel The Patron Saint of Liars by Ann Patchett for a course that will include convicted (or plead) men who might (or might not) have been liars, conspirators, or murderers. These men know the facts of their current condition -- they'll tell you -- they're in prison -- and they wish to learn more about what might have gotten them there, and how a life aided and abetted with knowledge and insight might help them in time to come.

I like these men. They are where they are and have to make some kind of peace with that reality. Some do; some don't. By and large, theirs is a time and place where the invitation to explore the facticity of their existence is an unusual opportunity. I've always considered learning, the practice of insight, and contemplative life of being-with-seeing to be an unusual invitation and opportunity.

I wish them well. So too, on a different plane, I wish the nation well. I wish the prosecutors, witnesses, those under suspicion, those hiding in plain sight, and those who actually believe they are exempt from ethical standards and the law -- well. I wish all of us well. As the poet Theodore Roethke wrote, "In a dark time the eye begins to see."

Truth, no matter what philosophers say, isn't a fragile thing. It might be hard to see, but it is what is -- the ground of any hope for human existence. It is very difficult to smash -- no matter how adept and powerful the blows against it. Lies, on the other hand, are fragile things, much easier to see (but harder to acknowledge because they cling close to our favorite idea we hold about ourselves), causing considerable sorrow, pain, and disconnection.

We watch our thoughts. We try to see Thought-Itself in the midst of thoughts and opinions.

Every thought is Buddha mind.

If we look.

Carefully enough.

We'll see.

What is, truly.

Free.

When too many words are spoken, quiet slips in undetected. .

In my youth I put aside my studies
And I aspired to be a saint.
Living austerely as a mendicant monk,
I wandered here and there for many springs.
Finally I returned home to settle under a craggy peak.
I live peacefully in a grass hut,
Listening to the birds for music.
Clouds are my best neighbors.
Below a pure spring where I refresh body and mind;
Above, towering pines and oaks that provide shade and brushwood.
Free, so free, day after day --
I never want to leave!
-- Ryokan

Dusk explains nothing.

Let's rest there.

Ryokan's leaves are gone; ours are full fresh green. It's the path that remains itself.

A single path through a dense forest,
Mountains peek out from between the floating mist.
Not yet autumn, the leaves have already disappeared,
And without rain, the rocks are always dark.
I gather mushrooms in a basket
And draw spring water into a jar.
Except for a stray traveler,
No one finds the way here.
- Ryokan

In prison I tutor basic reading skills in Saskia's classroom,. Robert looks at the letters "c,o,o,k" and says "chef." His mind leaps beyond phonic recognition. I tell him to first trust his eyes, trust his ears.

Sando at home bolts during thunderclaps before we arrived. She came back tired and deranged along Barnestown road. There are certain things we cannot hear and remain sane.

We practice stray spirituality. It is by doubtful indirection we stumble upon what is called "here."

By miraculous, paradoxical, and generous idiorhythmic grace -- no one finds the way here.

Become no one.

Find way.

Here.

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.