Thich Nhat Hanh wrote that the leaf is mother to tree.

Not the opposite.

Wonderful! Wonderful!
The sermon of the inanimate is inconceivable.
If you try to hear it with your ears,
After all you'll hardly understand
Only when you hear it in your eyes
Will you be able to know.
- Dongshan Liangjie (807-869)

Walking with Saskia to brook with dog and cat after sitting this morning, hundreds of yellow leaves blanket ground underfoot.

Each one is mother to earth. To the four of us walking.

Continuation and transition.

One's way making itself through this reality.

Perfection.

What would untie us? Where would we drift if untied?

At Zen centers they say there is a Way to be practiced
And a religious truth to be realized.
Tell me, what religious truth is realized,
What way is practiced?
In your present functioning, what do you lack?
What would you fix?
Younger newcomers, not understanding this,
Immediately believe these ...[enthrallists] and
Let them talk about things that tie people up.
- Linji (d. 867)

Ordinary life is good enough. Everything is good enough -- once the mind is untied from thinking that there's something to get back to. Or untied from the belief there's a need to be untied.

You will not be expecting us to write anything to you, brothers, [sisters], about 'times and seasons', since you know very well that the Day of the Lord is going to come like a thief in the night. It is when people are saying, 'How quiet and peaceful it is' that the worst suddenly happens, as suddenly as labour pains come on a pregnant woman; and there will be no way for anybody to evade it.
But it is not as if you live in the dark, my brothers [and sisters], for that Day to overtake you like a thief. No, you are all sons [and daughters] of light and sons [and daughters] of the day: we do not belong to the night or to darkness, so we should not go on sleeping, as everyone else does, but stay wide awake and sober. (1 Thessalonians 5:1 - 6)

Religion -- from Latin, perhaps from 'religare', 'to tie fast' -- has as 4th definition, "A cause, principle, or activity pursued with zeal or conscientious devotion."

The monastery of the heart is where all devotion takes place. The context of meetingbrook is to practice contemplation, conversation, and correspondence. We continually look for ways to integrate the intellectual, spiritual, and social.

Lloyd last evening at poetry, tea, and literature said we should become a peace center. Sara spoke about the cathedral in DC where there was a center for prayer and pilgrimage. In Belfast this morning at St. Francis of Assisi Church the energy was sweet with intelligent spirituality in community.

What we look for is everywhere to be found. The difficulty we encounter is thinking one could tie it up and keep it as it is in the moment it was experienced. But it passes, circles wide and away, then returns differing in shape and form, waiting to be found and experienced anew.

Meetingbrook is each face that shows up, circles, swirls away, sometimes returns -- but always remaining in our practice of prayer, peace, and pilgrimage.

We are tied to this practice. By any other name, religion.

It doesn't matter where we are. Small, middling, big, scattered or centralized, the invisible cord of connection to an inclusive community of awareness holds each and all, present or absent -- in diaphanous intimacy of belonging.

We practice staying wide, open, and awake.

War ages us in ways chronological time cannot. Those who've been in war are older than the rest of us. Hence the word "veteran" -- from Latin "vetus" meaning old.

Sam, Tommy, Richard, Hugh, Buzz, Dan, Hughie, John, Tom, Diane, Lloyd, Michael -- and all the others who are veterans who sometimes drop in at Meetingbrook -- we salute your service. We're also glad to acknowledge Armistice Day, or in Canada, Remembrance Day.

Subject and object from the start
Are no different,
The myriad things nothing
But images in the mirror.
Bright and resplendent,
Transcending both guest and host,
Complete and realized,
All is permeated by the absolute.
A single form encompasses
The multitude of dharmas,
All of which are interconnected
Within the net of Indra.
Layer after layer there is no
Point at which it all ends,
Whether in motion or still,
All is fully interpenetrating.
- Zhitong (d.1124)

Many conversations, some arguments, surely strong feelings -- have been aired in front of the fireplace. Veterans for some wars, veterans against some wars -- but all of them clear about one thing, namely, the men and women who serve must be looked upon and treated with respect and honor. Service, especially during war, is demanding and difficult. Only those who have been there can speak to it. The rest of us must first listen. Experience must first be heard. Only then, depending on the numbers of cups of coffee drunk, might the conversation divert into matters of controversy or politics.

The Street Sounds to the Soldiers' Tread

The street sounds to the soldiers' tread,
And out we troop to see:
A single redcoat turns his head,
He turns and looks at me.

My man, from sky to sky's so far,
We never crossed before;
Such leagues apart the world's ends are,
We're like to meet no more;

What thoughts at heart have you and I
We cannot stop to tell;
But dead or living, drunk or dry,
Soldier, I wish you well.
(Poem by A.E. Housman, 1859-1936)

Before opening the shop today we drive to three houses where men who've been in war reside. Saskia brings each a pastry-puff and wishes them a happy Veteran's Day. She reports smiles all around.

The Messages

"I cannot quite remember... There were five
Dropt dead beside me in the trench - and three
Whispered their last messages to me..."

Back from the trenches, more dead than alive,
Stone-deaf and dazed, and with a broken knee,
He hobbled slowly, muttering vacantly:

"I cannot quite remember... There were five
Dropt dead beside me in the trench, and three
Whispered their dying messages to me...

"Their friends are waiting, wondering how they thrive -
Waiting a word in silence patiently...
But what they said, or who their friends may be

"I cannot quite remember... There where five
Dropt dead beside me in the trench - and three
Whispered their dying messages to me..."
(Poem by Wilfrid Wilson Gibson, 1878-1962))

Remembering might be all we can do. The Canadians could be spot on. Remembering, not just mental recall, but physical/spiritual recollection that re-embodies a transformed reality to exist alongside the hard, frightening experience we know of as war. This transformed reality will serve to transcend time and space, will serve to attempt to make whole with wisdom and loving-kindness what the harsh, amputated experience of war could not.

Lament (1916)

We who are left, how shall we look again
Happily on the sun or feel the rain
Without remembering how they who went
Ungrudgingly and spent
Their lives for us loved, too, the sun and rain?

A bird among the rain-wet lilac sings -
But we, how shall we turn to little things
And listen to the birds and winds and streams
Made holy by their dreams,
Nor feel the heart-break in the heart of things?
(Poem by Wilfred Wilson Gibson)

Today we turn attention to these little things: blue water, smoky fire, potatoes and sausage, conversation, flag waving in wind.

Old veterans never die, they become long-winded.

We rest awhile in the heart of things.

War?

War is not the issue. War is defined as: “A state of open, armed, often prolonged conflict carried on between nations, states, or parties.” War threatens to become fashionable. We are at war in Iraq with an enemy we cannot recognize. Before that we were in Afghanistan at war with people from another country. We are at war with terror. Every irregular behavior looks like terror and attracts wary police or military attention. We have no idea how to fight a noun, verb, adjective or adverb variant of “terror.”

Still, we are at war with terror. At home we have been at war with poverty. At war with drugs. There are wars between red and blue, liberals and conservatives, Bush-lovers and Bush-haters. There is a propaganda war. There is even a ratings war for dominance among television networks. There are battles between sports franchises. There are battles in congress, before the Supreme Court, and no one is quite sure what (if any) sensible outcome is possible or will ever result from these battles and wars. The president has recently declared war against bird flu.

War is not the issue. Greed, self-delusion, and deceit are closer to the issue. War is only war -- a means searching for a reputable end. But there is, it seems, no end to the human mind's attachment to war and the concept of war. Greed, delusion, and deceit are enders of human hope and trust -- a far more destructive effect than even the devastation mechanized war can reach.

A crowd of stars lines up
Bright in the deep night.
Lone lamp on the cliff,
The moon is not yet sunk,
Full and bright without being
Ground or polished.
Hanging in the black sky is my mind.
- Han Shan (early 9th century)

Time is out of joint. It is confusing for many of us. Time seems to be speeding up. The gulf widens between the rich and poor. Natural catastrophes, such as volcanoes, earthquakes, and hurricanes tear through life and property with death and destruction. Men and women, wearing or driving bombs, hurl themselves into the midst of fellow and sister human beings detonating themselves. Elected leaders of nations have no response that indicates they have a clue what is going on and how to make a difference. At least not an insightful, enlightening response. So much of the behavior we see in corporate halls is grab while the grabbing's good.

We can deal with war, the so-called traditional war. Legitimate, ethical, and proportionate response to unprovoked attack against the well being of peoples or nations is necessary when the call comes to intervene. When we send young men and women into harm's way we have a responsibility to transcend politics, ideology, and self-serving ambition. It is always young men and women whose minds and bodies are torn apart in war. Every day from Iraq we are sent dead bodies of Americans, and we watch as dead bodies of Iraqis are sent to ground. The wounded – all of them from every side – limp, half blinded, shattered into a broken future.

A New York Times columnist relates a conversation with a man serving in the military:
A captain who is on active duty, and therefore asked not to be identified by name, told me yesterday:
"The only reason I stayed in the Army was because one colonel convinced me to do it. Other than that, I would have walked. Basically, these guys who are leaving have their high-powered educations. Some are from West Point. They've done their five years. Why should they stay and go back to Iraq and die in a war that's just going to keep on going?"
Beyond that, he said, "Guys are not going to stay in the Army when their wives are leaving them."
From the perspective of the troops, he said, the situation in Iraq is perverse.
He could find no upside. "You go to war," he said, "and you could lose your heart, your mind, your arms, your legs - but you cannot win. The soldiers don't win."
(11/10/2005, NYTimes Op-Ed, "An Army Ready to Snap" By Bob Herbert)

The issue is suffering. It is time to face suffering.

The suffering of Christ is not a trademark owned by any Christian church. The suffering of Christ is the suffering of each and every being. The church is the individual willing to open mind and heart to another individual, and then another. The process of such opening illuminates the reality of Christ as the loving acceptance of the reality of each. To find the reality of Christ we must look to the individual -- i.e. the undivided -- and be willing to sacrifice the belief in what is not of the whole in order to engage the reality of what is of the whole. The world is of the whole. The world is not a mistake, not a falling from a state of primordial perfection into matter, not the booby prize in a contest of spiritualist purity. The earth and all that it contains, all the beings it supports, and the humans that unlock nature's secrets -- all this, things as they are -- is the dwelling place of the one-we-call-God.

The Four Noble Truths -- about suffering: its cause, the penetration, understanding, and cessation of it -- are not the intellectual property of any Buddhist sangha. The Eightfold Path invites us into a life of practice that attends to 1. Wisdom, i.e. (Right Understanding, Right Aspiration); 2. Morality, i.e. (Right Speech, Right Action, Right Livelihood); and, 3. Concentration, i.e. (Right Effort, Right Mindfulness, Right Concentration). These efforts to get ourselves "right" with the world and one another are efforts to realize the true and proper nature of who we are and what we are doing in the world. The dissatisfaction and unfulfilled lives we experience is directly an effect of clinging to views, beliefs, and opinions that are harmful to persons, places, sentient beings, and things of all shapes and purpose. Suffering discords and discards.

To allow the suffering of individuals and the suffering of the world to be transformed through us, we have to incarnate a new being. This being will not be discordant, but will harmonize the many sounds passing through it. This being will not be discarded, but will find its place in the dwelling of a community of awareness. You through whom the discord and discard passes, will not be harmed or destroyed by the process of transubstantiation. Why not? Because you have not made yourself other, have not taken stance antagonistic to the life flowing through you, nor have you pretended it was you doing the transforming work. Life heals itself. Or, put another way, life is healed by Itself. "Itself" needs a place through which the suffering of life's members can pass and be acknowledged, accepted, and affirmed. You are that place. We are that place.

Archbishop Romero, who was assassinated in 1980, had this to say fifteen months earlier:
But let us remember that Christ has become a person of his people, of his time; he lived as a Jew; he labored as a worker in Nazareth, and ever since, he is made flesh in all people.
If many have moved away from the church, it is precisely because the church has been a little alienated from humanity.
But a church that would feel as its own, all that is human, and would wish to incarnate within itself the sorrow, hope and anguish, of all who suffer and rejoice, that church would be Christ loved and awaited, Christ present.
And that depends on us.
(Archbishop Oscar Romero, 3December1978, in August-September 2005 issue of "The Catholic Worker")

Are we ready to put off greed, delusion, and deceit? Are we ready to vacate our views, beliefs, and opinions in order to arrive empty for the loving work of Itself to renew being and life?

We need to encourage those of us frightened by the prospect of embodying and transforming suffering. Encourage a reflection about dying and resurrecting through suffering's transformation and cessation. Encourage an awareness that ultimately, by birthing a new incarnation and new enlightenment in this world, yes, in this very world, this very existence -- we enter into the sacred meditation and transubstantiating miracle that is the grace of this moment.

This moment of grace is attention to our true nature. The work needing to be done is inner work that must be done through, with, in, and as "us." There is no world "out there" to change. The healing needing to be done is an inside job.

It is not a war.

It is, simply -- prayer and practice.

Lower guns.

Lower eyes.

Lower body to sit.

Silently, still.

Peace!

The elderly artist dropped his cigar to the rug in front of fireplace in his cozy study. He says he doesn't sketch anymore. "It's gone," he says. He's in shock over circumstances in his family's life.

Out in the van, cold rain blackening road, we drive home over wet leaves.

The purpose of Zen is to enable people to immediately transcend the ordinary and the holy, just getting people to awaken on their own, forever cutting off the root of doubt. Many people in modern times disregard this. They may join Zen groups, but they are lazy about Zen study. Even if they achieve concentration, they do not choose real teachers. Through the error of false teachers, they likewise lose their way. Without having understood senses and objects, as soon as they possess themselves of some false interpretation they become obsessed by it and lose the correct basis completely. They are only interested in becoming leaders and being known as teachers. While they value an empty reputation in the world, they bring ill on themselves. Not only do they make their successors blind and deaf, they also cause the influence of Zen to degenerate.
- Fayan

I pick up cigar and give it back to him. His wife says he hasn't sketched since January -- a long pause in a habit that he'd practiced every day for over sixty years. "But he's begun to write," she says. He tilts his head and raises eyebrows, ceding. "I'll stop by, read them, give them back, and leave." -- I tell him.

I don't know what to think about zen.

The cigar rolled to edge of rug by rear leg of chair.

Sometimes a visit is only a visit.

Saskia has food ready to eat.

Dripping spigot speeds beat into white pot in kitchen sink.

Your heart knows
The way to Heng Mountain.
You are not afraid;
Few people go there.
Inside the boat,
You still hear birds and temple chimes.
At the river's source,
You dry your monk's robe in the sun.
You had a family,
But left it when young;
Now there is no temple
That would not welcome you.
Managing to find
A shelter in the cold,
You do your usual zazen
As snow fills up your door.
- Chia Tao (779-843) dailyzen

Steady flow into sink, a drummer's flurry before handing lick back to tightened faucet.

Ayya Khema's words tonight at conversation about anicca, dukkha, and anatta -- impermanent, unfulfilled, of no core-substance -- also drip through kitchen's quiet.

Ball rolls in from front room. Border collie chases after. Maine coon cat sleeps on bed across from sink.

Wendell Berry ends his poem "To My Mother" with the lines:
...And this, then,
is the vision of that Heaven of which
we have heard, where those who love
each other have forgiven each other,
where, for that, the leaves are green,
the light a music in the air,
and all is unentangled,
and all is undismayed.

Baking paper fits on tray for frozen croissants defrosting.

Two good words: unentangled; undismayed.

Those who love have forgiven.

A fifteen year old boy in town committed suicide a few days ago. Citizens of the town anguish again. Will his death become contagious?

During a question/answer at Festival of the Spirit with a visiting spiritual teacher yesterday morning there was conversation about the death by suicide. Someone noted that the prevalent response at these times is crisis intervention counseling. This is following the event. We have to ask: What might precede the suicide and the response?

Turn your attention within;
Don't memorize my words.
You have been turning from light to darkness
Since before you can remember,
So the roots of your subjective ideas are deep
And hard to uproot all at once.
This is why I temporarily use expedients
To take away your coarse perceptions.
- Yangshan

"Expedient" means: "1. Something that is a means to an end; 2. Something contrived or used to meet an urgent need."

Novelist and existentialist philosopher Albert Camus wants to remind us about suicide. In 1942, in his philosophical essay LE MYTHE DE SISYPHE (The Myth of Sisyphus), the famous statement: "There is only one really serious philosophical question, and that is suicide. Deciding whether or not life is worth living is to answer the fundamental question in philosophy. All other questions follow from that."

Teenagers think about suicide. That consideration is enough to frighten many adults. Suicide is a means and something contrived to end a thought, a feeling -- to put to rest an urgent need.

Norman Scrimshaw, in his Spiritual Dialogue talk yesterday morning, used the example of two phrases "all will be well" and "thy will be done" as guides toward finding peace and happiness. He used a ski metaphor -- each phrase as an individual ski to take us on our run.

I sat with the issue in the balcony.
The thought teenagers have is what the culture reinforces: all is not well, especially not with you, and it never will be well. The feeling is reinforced by other members of their age group: you're a jerk, uncool, a loser, and an object of scorn, derision, and laughter.

Contemporary culture -- whether political, corporate, athletic, celebrity, or peer -- falls easily into this posture of degradation.

The crisis response has to precede the suicidal impulses pulsating through contemporary life.

Need a suggestion? Whenever you hear anyone -- teen or adult, or group of either -- putting down some person or group, step up and step in and say the following: "I overheard what you were saying. And what you were saying about that kid (or that person, or group) also applies to me. I'm going to have to do some self-searching about this. Maybe you too."

We all can do some self-searching. Maybe we'll come to the suspicion we can't say anything about someone else that doesn't also apply to each and every one of us. With that seed of knowledge we can begin to embody the suffering that is tossed around so blithely by people who do not yet realize they are talking to and about themselves.

Suicide is the feeling and thought we are eliminating the unbearable pain of the feeling and thought that all is not well, and that we must control the world, our life, and everything that passes through each.

Actually, all will be well.

Actually, God's will being done is awareness and compassion toward oneself --oneself in all its appearances -- even in the appearance of our tormentors.

Actually, suicide is an option -- a serious, and in some ways, an important one. But suicide as understood in a new way -- namely, the dissolving of the thought and feeling of the isolated and separate self. With this dissolving of the feeling and thought of an isolated and separate self ultimately comes the awakening and awareness of oneself -- in, with, as, and through each appearance. The seeming "other" and the seeming "isolated self" dissolve. We are left with "What Is" -- ("God" by any other name.)

What we are left with is where we begin as a community of awareness. It is beyond subject and object. It is a place where each is itself -- not two, not one -- but whole and entire with what is whole and entire. Mystics see God -- in this, as this -- place.

The Golden Rule -- seeing neighbor as self, not doing to another what we do not wish to experience ourselves -- requires a reflection on the process and the structure of suffering. This reflection needs to precede events like suicide. The awareness undergirding this insight and intuition is like the process of gold in fire.

When does gold ore become gold? When it is put through a process of fire. So the human being during the training becomes as pure as gold through suffering. It is the burning away of the dross. Suffering has a great redeeming quality. As a drop of water falling on the desert sand is sucked up immediately, so we must become nothing and nowhere ... we must disappear. (~Bhai Sahib, quoted in 'Travelling the Path of Love' Ed. Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee)

This is what we have to talk about.

Let this conversation become contagious.

Until and as it does, we go about our lives. Currently, in this town, we sorrow the death of this young man.

An infant named Grace slept in rocker in lobby of film festival in Rockland this evening.

The sound of a swollen
Mountain stream rapidly rushing
Makes one know
How very quickly life itself
Is pressed along its course.
- Saigyo (1118-1190)

The Sufi teacher interviewed on screen said praising God and serving one another in God were good things to do.

The practice of presence; the presence of practice.

Grace awakens.

Make enemy and there is enemy. Thought-form becomes solid.

Luminous is this mind,
Brightly shining, but it is
Colored by the attachments
That visit it.
This unlearned people do not
Really understand,
And so do not cultivate the mind.
Luminous is this mind,
Brightly shining,
And it is free of the
Attachments that visit it.
This the noble follower
Of the Way really understands;
So for them there is
Cultivation of the mind.
- Anguttara Nikaya

Recognize suffering and suffering begins to dissolve.

We participate intimately in the movement of mind -- in the cosmogenesis of what is to follow upon current place.

Thought-forms, or "memes" (as one writer puts it) take on lives of their own.
meme (mēm) n. A unit of cultural information, such as a cultural practice or idea, that is transmitted verbally or by repeated action from one mind to another.
[Shortening (modeled on GENE) of mimeme, from Greek mimēma, something imitated, from mimeisthai, to imitate. See mimesis.]
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=meme

meme
The term and concept of meme (pronounced [meem] from the Greek word μνήμη for 'memory') is a neologism that first appeared in the 1976 book by Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene. Though Dawkins defined the meme as "a unit of cultural transmission, or a unit of imitation," memeticists vary in their definitions of meme.
Different definitions of the meme generally agree, very roughly, that a meme consists of some sort of a self-propagating unit of cultural evolution having a resemblance to the gene (the unit of genetics). Dawkins introduced the term after writing that evolution depended not on the particular chemical basis of genetics, but only on the existence of a self-replicating unit of transmission Ã?‚— in the case of evolution, the gene. For Dawkins, the meme exemplifies another self-replicating unit, and most importantly, one which he thought would prove useful in explaining human behavior and cultural evolution.
In casual use, the term meme often refers to any piece of information passed from one mind to another.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meme)

If we cultivate the mind -- (let life flow through life-giving thoughts; let pass and fall away life-denying thoughts) -- we participate with light finding its way through this existence.

Light will find its way through darkness -- through it, not eliminating it. It is attachment to misunderstanding that believes we eliminate and destroy darkness. When men act with such a mind, everyone suffers,

We must allow light on suffering so as to comfort those who suffer.

This morning, at dawn, first light walked with Cesco and I up path winding way through trees and brook. Yellow-brown leaves on mountain path damp from nighttime's memory are practicing stillness during quiet passage.

The mind of earth participates with each step, with four of us sitting in fire-warn cabin, with psalmic melody including in prayer our vast brother/sisterhood.

Luminous and brightly shining watchful earth, dwelling place of what is lovely and true, all that we hold sacred, God-life as it is -- we grow, tend, and nurture -- this.

This open mind.

This open heart.

Surrounding us.

The hermitage is carried within. World is monastery. The convent is a woman's walk along rooted earth and sea salt speckled stone stepping down to beach.

Found on the wall of a convent soon to be destroyed:

In haste and hurry we gather
Up our tattered robes,
And pack up our traveling bags:
Not much to take.
Sleeves brushing white clouds,
We retreat to the cave's mouth,
Carrying the moon on our shoulders,
We circle the sky's edge.
I feel such sad pity for the young cranes
Nesting on the pine tops,
And for abandoning the flowers I
Planted at the foot of the fence.
Again and again I admonish the cats and dogs
Not to hang around the homes of lay people!
- Jueqing (1537)

You see, the religious institutions have gone to ground. They have fallen into the very molecules that reverberate sound through skin and skull.

Some are sad at the grounding. Some want special uniform and special treatment to try to assure them they are special in the eyes of the people, if not in the eyes of the divine.

Blackbird

There was nothing I could have done --
a flurry of blackbirds burst
from the weeds at the edge of a field
and one veered out into my wheel
and went under. I had a moment
to hope he'd emerge as sometimes
they will from beneath the back
of the car and fly off,
but I saw him behind on the roadbed,
the shadowless sail of a wing
lifted vainly from the clumsy
bundle of matter he'd become.

There was nothing I could have done,
though perhaps I was distracted:
I'd been listening to news of the war,
hearing that what we'd suspected
were lies had proved to be lies,
that many were dying for those lies,
but as usual now, it wouldn't matter.
I'd been thinking of Lincoln's,
". . .You can't fool all of the people
all of the time. . ." how I once
took comfort from the hope and trust
it implied, but no longer.

I had to slow down now,
a tractor hauling a load of hay
was approaching on the narrow lane.
The farmer and I gave way and waved:
the high-piled bales swayed
menacingly over my head but held.
Out in the newly harvested fields,
already harrowed and raw,
more blackbirds, uncountable
clouds of them, rose, held
for an instant, then broke,
scattered as though by a gale.
(Poem "Blackbird" by C.K. Williams)

Hermits today move out through the world to ground where truth brooks no cover, no promise of other.

There was nothing else we could do. Not then. We didn't understand what their haste would destroy.

We have to slow down. Now. Pause to look.

Scatter from fear. Alight feathers. Say what must be said.

Abandon the vaguely assuring estrangement of lies.

Wander rooted ground truthfully, unknowingly.

Sing psalmic verses praising (absurd) kindness.

Be what religion has forgotten -- to become.

Be what is -- well.

Marquee on main street says "Strand." We strand ourselves watching Evelyn Glennie in 'Touch The Sound,' a film by Thomas Riedelsheimer

In the shade of two trees
And the hanging green of the cliffs,
One lamp for a thousand years
Broke open the dark barriers.
I too now realize that phenomena
Are nothing but a magic show
And happily grow old among the mist,
The rivers, and the stones.
- Miaozhan (1260-1308)

Her music, her life, and her spirit open for us sound and gaze. Steve D. and friends are hosting again "Cinema of the Spirit" in Rockland.

This hermitage was here first
Only then, the world.
When the world crumbles,
This hermitage will not be destroyed.
The host inside the hermitage
Is present everywhere.
The moon shines on the eternal void;
The wind whistles through
Ten thousand openings.
- Shiwu (1347)

Hermitage, for tonight, is long loving gaze into the core-and-care of "what is." Hermitage is itself the invitation to look into "what is."

Hermitage is practicing -- this alone -- with a silence that permeates both wordless emptiness and wording presence.

In the Shinto teaching of “the God-like way,” we find the following: "The heart of the person before you is a mirror. See there your own form"

Lovely the artists making for us this world lovely.

There is a mirror we are invited to look into. What we see there, and what we do next, is effectively our meditative practice and spiritual journey.

Within the vast expanse of dust
Essentially a single suchness,
Whether vertical or horizontal,
Everything bears the seal of Vairochana.
Although the entire wave is made of water,
The wave is not the water;
Although all of the water may turn to waves,
The water is still itself.
- Zhitong (d.1124)

To be "still itself" is a profound awareness.

The name Vairochana means "He Who Is Like the Sun" or "the Radiating One." Vairochana represents either the integration of or the origin of the Dhyani Buddhas. His wisdom is the Wisdom of the Dharmadhatu. The Dharmadhatu is the Realm of Truth, in which all things exist as they really are. Vairochana's wisdom is also referred to as the All-Pervading Wisdom of the Dharmakaya. The Dharmakaya is the Body of the Law, or the absolute Buddha nature. (http://www.tsl.org/Masters/buddhas/dhyani/vairochana.html)

The mirror takes nothing and gives us nothing back. It, too, is circumference and center of our body.

Love After Love

The time will come
when, with elation,
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror,
and each will smile at the other's welcome,

And say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was yourself.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.
(Poem by Derek Walcott)

The Shinto maxim in line with the Christian Golden Rule ("Do unto others as you would have them do unto you") is "The heart of the person before you is a mirror. See there your own form."

Peel the image.

Honor the dead.

It is their day.

All of ours.

It is time.

Country, world, knows what must happen.

Tell all the Truth but tell it slant

Tell all the Truth but tell it slant---
Success in Circuit lies
Too bright for our infirm Delight
The Truth's superb surprise
As Lightening to the Children eased
With explanation kind
The Truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind---
(Poem by Emily Dickinson)

A saint seeks God.

As all souls do.

It is November.

Morning walk across northeast side of Ragged Mountain. Earth is soft moist on trail.

You ask me why I live
In jade mountains.
I smile, unanswering.
My heart is calm.
Peach petals floating on the water,
Never come back.
There is a heaven and earth
Beyond the crowded town below.
- Li Bai (701-762)

On mountain, yellow leaves snuggle against broken branches diverting water in crooked streams. Leaves have detached from trees and fallen to earth where they can roll where brisk winds take them -- a new freedom that only follows loss

Your son, my lord, has paid a soldiers debt.
He only lived but till he was a man,
The which no sooner had his prowess confirm'd
In the unshrinking station where he fought,
But like a man he died.
(--from Act 5, Scene 9, Macbeth, by William Shakespeare)

War is the deficiency of human reason to honestly engage the differences rife in our common experience of existence in this contemporary world. There's nothing honorable in war -- except the way men and women, trusting their superiors, place their lives on battle lines and varied stretches of deadly dangerous geography. Iraq is one of those places. One could, if pressed, respect the hearts and minds of everyone engaged in the war -- soldiers, civilians, and people of every stripe and strife. Each acts for some reason felt to be adequate to the act.

War horrifies me. The deficiency we encounter when some cry "War!" is the frightening triumph of ideology over human reason. I do not wish to entertain the cases where force is necessary and immediate. I speak of times when such action is not necessary, not wise, and not for the common good. At this point of human history we know the horrors of war -- we know when necessity demands response, and we know the futility of unfocused engagement. It is hard to imagine sane men and women initiating a war for purposes they cannot articulate, using strategies they cannot justify, and whose duration they consider to be never-ending and never-satisfying.

Men who proclaim themselves knowers of God's special advice are hard so-called "teachers" and "favored channels" to tolorate. So many want to be "daddy" and "master."

You, however, must not allow yourselves to be called Rabbi, since you have only one master, and you are all brothers [and sisters]. You must call no one on earth your father, since you have only one Father, and he is in heaven. Nor must you allow yourselves to be called teachers, for you have only one Teacher, the Christ. The greatest among you must be your servant. Anyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and anyone who humbles himself will be exalted.
(Matthew 23:10 - 12)

When a woman last evening told of the behavior of her family when she was a young girl, it occurred to me that the man and woman she described were not her "family" -- but were sorrowful patterns of destructive behavior stuck in habitual conditioning. Her real "family," it was countered, were all the things and all the beings that she treated, and that treated her, with love and respect, serving one another with attention and compassion. This notion of family is put squarely within the creative capability and constructive energy of herself. Corrosive attachments to something are not the thing itself. Enliven the thing itself, the vital shoot of our vital authentic being, and that which is unnecessary has nothing to cling to. What falls away is not true family. True family resides lovely within.

We can't want a "not." Not to remember, not to feel, not to experience, or not to repeat what was done to us -- these are wanting nots.

We can only long for a "yes" -- something that is itself, unconditioned and self-organizing -- and this longing resides deep within us. No one can tell us what we want. What is "yes" is an affirmation of what is most true -- looking at it, seeing it, and allowing it to drop into and through our being. As it passes through, we experience a moment of grace. We are free within what is itself. What is not itself falls away.

Be wary of any and all "selling" jobs.

It is the insanity of our times that some continue to call upon God, Jesus, Mohammad -- or any other named or believed-in god or personage -- to sell, justify or back their foray into war. The deviousness of invoking "God" or "country" in order to stir up passion for killing and destroying -- is, at this point of history, the depth of impiety and danger.

Forget the "war" on terror. It wants a "not."

Remember to serve one another with humility.

Such remembrance longs to be who we are.

A calm heart sees heaven, sees earth.

Each within another.

A loving, lovely sight.

One small part of barn cleaned and cleared today. We win race to dump, arriving just ahead of 4:00PM.

In autumn
even though I may
see it again,
how can I sleep
with the moon this evening?
- Dogen

Maybe when we wake up we'll see there is no choice -- only the longing and need to realize oneself alongside another.

Yes, you love all that exists, you hold nothing of what you have made in abhorrence, for had you hated anything, you would not have formed it.
And how, had you not willed it, could a thing persist,
how be conserved if not called forth by you?
(--Wisdom 11:21)

The invitation to "come forth." Jesus called to Lazarus, saying "Lazarus, come forth!" We are called to come forth.

Practice, repetition, and repetition of the repeated with ever increasing intensity are its distinctive features for long
stretches of the way.
(- Eugen Herrigel, Zen and the Art of Archery )

Wood fire in cabin all day.

Porch swept.

Prayer said.

In prison today there was a memorial service for a man named David.

Originally there is no such thing as Buddha, but by necessity the name was given to him. Originally there is no such thing as mind. To attain enlightenment is to realize the one thing. For the sake of illustration, it is said that the one thing is empty, but it is not really empty. Mind of no mind is the true mind, wisdom of no wisdom is the true wisdom.
- Hyechi’oi

All we can say is what we are.

What are we?

Present!

It's a funny world.

Even with insects--
some can sing,
some can't.
(Poem by Kobayashi Issa; Translated by Robert Hass)

We can only wait to hear the song that begins tomorrow when grand jury results are announced in Washington DC.

There's not much to like with what we hear from and about our leaders in the nation's capital.

Some have an ear for the sound of truth.

Some don't.

We've grown used to executing people for their faith.

Do not lose yourself in the future.
The past no longer is.
The future has not yet come.
Looking deeply at life as it is
In the very here and now,
The practitioner dwells
In stability and freedom.
We must be diligent today.
To wait until tomorrow is too late.
Death comes unexpectedly.
How can we bargain with it?
The sage calls a person who knows
How to dwell in mindfulness
Night and day
"one who knows the better
way to live."
- Bhaddekaratta Sutra

Increasingly, my faith is in the present (now), in presence (here), grateful for presents (gifts) of this moment and this place.

America will not (if awake) permit anyone -- not foreign, not domestic -- to take away freedom, life, and the pursuit of happiness. Not anyone. Even if the threat comes from those who swear they are protecting and guarding the good heart of American tolorance and hospitality -- the good heart and fierce honor of its people (when awakened) will remember not to forget its soul. It is a dangerous time. We must wake up. The threat is at our door. Both sides of the door.

We in America are having difficulties with our leaders. They have taken advantage of our fear, anger, and our sleep. Misrepresentation, and many say, overzealous belief in an ideology that does not conform to the religious, ethnic, racial, and commonsense values of fairness, justice, and obedience to law -- has clouded the judgement and decisions made by the American administration..

The time is coming, and is near -- when the men and women who have played fast and loose with the philosophy of law and independence of this land -- will be forced to face the historical judgement that their actions and intentions be held in disrepute. Of this there is no doubt.

It is a time to pray. Pray for them, and for the rest of us who have had to put up with them. And pray for all whose lives and freedoms have been violated.

This prayer is toward wholeness. This prayer is toward healing. This prayer is, finally, toward transparent compassion and love.

We can learn this, this prayer.

No more executing people. Let's execute -- that is, "pursue, carry out, and follow" -- prayer where it takes us.

As the lyric goes in the theme song "Over There" from the powerful TV drama of the same name about the war in Iraq, "If you know one, say a prayer."

We can do this.

Know one.

Say it.

2,000 American military dead in Iraq. Many more Iraqis.

He leans into twilight on a bamboo cane,
Waiting for me at Tiger Creek.
Hearing tigers roar, he urges me to leave,
Then follows a rushing brook back to his hut.
Wild flowers bloom beautifully in clusters.
A bird's single note quiets the ravine.
In still night he sits in an empty forest,
Feeling autumn on the pine forest wind.
- Wang Wei

It is a lamentable number.

So, we lament.

Americans.

Iraqis.

Dead.

Yellow leaf falls through rain. Wind has its way. Rises, then falls. Late October bluster.

Two methods enable us to rectify our heart:
The first is study,
Enriching our mind through practice and discipline;
Training, studying until an inner light begins
To grow within.
This seed of consciousness, the sages teach,
Should be nourished and kept in silence.
The second is the cultivation of Virtue.
A sincere student discovers the working of Tao
By overcoming all manner of temptation.
Hordes of riches are outweighed in merit by
A single word, Virtue.
- Loy Ching-Yuen (1873-1960)

Woodstove warms cabin. Two hermit/monastics sit then chant morning prayer under metronomic beat on roof. It is a lovely yet absurd practice. Tonite we'll sit then chant heart sutra with rhythmic beat on wood box.

Words.

Silence.

Do not court death by the errors of your ways,
nor invite destruction through your own actions.
Death was not God's doing,
he takes no pleasure in the extinction of the living.
To be -- for this he created all;
the world's created things have health in them,
in them no fatal poison can be found,
and Hades holds no power on earth;
for virtue is undying.
(Wisdom 1:14-15)

There's no other reason for practice than practice. It is in itself what we do. No one to please. No one to impress. No advertising. No hiding. Just silence and words moving into and through words and silence.

The seasons, spring, summer, autumn and winter, follow one another in harmony. The quarters from which the winds blow function in due season without the least deviation. And the ever-flowing springs, created for our health as well as our enjoyment, unfailingly offer their breasts to sustain human life. The tiniest of living creatures meet together in harmony and peace.
(from A letter to the Corinthians by Pope St Clement, d.101AD)

Cat curls on bed in kitchen. Dog stretches on bed in study. Saskia brings chicken soup to shop at harbour. I watch yellow leaf drop through wind and rain.

I have nothing to say about God. Nor do I have anything to say against God. I accept God as God accepts me. God is God. Bill is Bill. It is a delightful, wet, and stormy day.

Love is love. Truth, truth. Presence, presence.

Birth is birth and death is death.

Life is life.

Nothing more?

Nothing less!

Seeds finally in bird feeders.

Seed, itself, cultivating.

Jane donates ten years of Tricycle: The Buddhist Review to hermitage. They reside in harbour room for reading and borrowing.

Tommy and Saskia loaded wood yesterday into pickup from hermitage dooryard by mountain. This morning we'll unload at harbour. Fires begin in earnest in large hearth at bookshop/bakery today. Sam will like that. He began bringing daily kindling this week.

The harbour room is now equipped with wireless internet access for visitors to use. We are now a Hermitage/Internet Cafe. I suppose the difference is that should you get nothing from the computer, that would be just fine.

The waters of Penobscot Bay backdrop harbour room. Moorings unhook their boats as October frost dips toes and temperatures into autumn tides.

When water is pure and sparkling clear,
you see straight to the bottom.
When your mind holds no concern,
no circumstance can turn you.
And once your mind doesn't stray
you are residing in spaciousness.
From such awareness nothing hides.
- Han shan

Saskia makes brownies. She'll take to tiller and jib with Alana for brisk sail.

Morning practice in the breath-watching middle 30's cabin at sunrise. We walk meditatively the lower mountain up to waterfalling cascades. We turn reflexively looking for second dog, catching up within.

Sun on yellow and burnt orange leaves on trees.

Mu-ge, cat-kibble breakfast taken, has thousands of blowing leaves to pounce.

Zen and contemplation are not mysterious.

If we see this -- there's nothing to say.

Except, perhaps, as World Series begins, "Play Ball!"

The New York Times, Fox News, the Networks, news media and sources..
The United States Government.
The Roman Catholic Church.
Major financial institutions.
Large corporations.
Guardians of law.
Civic vigilance.

Are failing.

They fail readers, viewers, citizens, church-goers and children, the public and employees, neighbors and newcomers.

Before the window
yellow leaves rustle.
I sit in meditation
without the least word
and look back to see
my illusions completely gone.
- Han Shan Te-ch'ing (1546-1623)

It is surprising how widespread the failings of what we've known and trusted.

The institutions fall away in failure -- as we await our illusions to fall away.

May we not, ever again, be led into temptation.

But delivered from the absence of truth, absence of compassion, absence of good, and absence of integrity -- that these failings represent.

We will look back and wonder how we ever had faith in these embarrassing examples of deceit and illusion.

When we do look back, and when we continue on our individual and common ways, perhaps it will be with forgiveness and mercy -- but it will never again be with trust.

In order to come to terms with this new abandonment -- we will need profound meditation and deep contemplation.

Without the least word.

In prison this morning we sit awhile with a table full of conversation in one room, followed by silent sitting with fledgling meditators in another.

It is refreshing.

Words and silence.

Starting new.

Some argue the words "attached" and "detached."

Better we find a middle ground. Somewhere between "engaged" and "not-clinging." Just there, in that middle between, we suspend -- surrendering to what is -- God is there.
About this dwelling-place, we are unknowing.

Above all don't wish to become a future buddha;
Your only concern should be,
As thought follows thought,
To avoid clinging to any of them.
- Dogen

When I dozed off five years ago -- just after midnight and just before tap on foot told me my sister had breathed her last -- a stillness held us all in the presence of what is taking place.

A word is dead
When it is said,
Some say.
I say it just
Begins to live
That day.
(--Emily Dickinson)

The word we speak is our presence gathered into community, sangha. For some -- church, assembly, or circle.

Word is community as silence is solitude. Between the two, profound faith -- that is, unknowing presence.

The Lord's ways are pure; the words of the Lord are refined in the furnace; the Lord protects all who hope in him.
(from Psalm 17 {18})

There, in middle of everything that seems to be two, dwells what is of itself.

That which is of itself -- not one, not two -- dwells in the sound of word pronouncing the unknown with attentive silence.

We chant Compline. Invite bell. Extinguish candles. Walk back from chapel/zendo.

It is difficult
to get the news from poems
yet men die miserably every day
for lack
of what is found there . . .
(from "Asphodel," poem by William Carlos Williams)

We are poems.

Being written.

Found there.

The war in Iraq is lost.

The "war on terror" is a foolish statement uttered by curiously detached men who seem not to care that international and national rules of common decency are abandoned as cruelty and torture become tit for tat between terrorists and U.S. troops along with mercenary hirelings.

The Buddha said: "My doctrine implies thinking of that which is beyond thought, performing that which is beyond performance, speaking of that which is beyond words and practicing that which is beyond practice. The way that can be expressed in words stops short; there is nothing which can be grasped. If you are wrong by so much as the thousandth part of a hair, you will lose the Way in a flash."
- Sutra of 42 Sections

At Wednesday Evening Laura Conversation there is agreement not much can be trusted coming from press, media, and government. The role of each seems to be obfuscation. Still, some say, the search for clarity cannot abandon truth and compassion. Engaged Buddhism and engaged Christianity (to name only two forms of engagement) ask us to assist the hurting and work for peace. The absence of trust need not inhibit authentic action toward finding balance between individuals and nations at a time of questionable behavior and doubtful resources.

In the Oval Office no visitor is obliged to fall upon
knees and weary the President's hand with kisses.
Yet the fear Tacitus expressed could be voiced today.
He worried that such "a monotony of disasters"
as those ordered by Nero might, if recited, disgust all
who heard them. He preferred not to sicken his readers
lest they be "fatigued of mind and paralyzed with grief."
In Rome thousands like us could only pray for relief.
(Poem: "Of Presidents & Emperors" by David Ray from The Death of Sardanapalus and Other Poems of The Iraq Wars.)

Jesus and Buddha's devotees debate whether we are on our own or if we are an integrity of community in the tasks confronting human being in the world.

We're on our own because we cannot find trustworthy confidence in our leaders.
We're in this with everyone because, no matter the weakness and shortsightedness of those claiming to act on our behalf, we must find a way to transcend their shortcomings and enact a reasonable and sane response to the anger and suffering of the world.

If you took notice of our transgressions, Lord -- Lord, who would be left?
But with you is forgiveness, and for this we revere you.
I rely on you, Lord, my spirit relies on your promise;
my soul hopes in the Lord, more than the watchman for daybreak.
(--from Psalm 129{130})

I don't suspect it occurred to many after 9/11/01 to forgive the men, known and unknown, who brought about the killing and destruction in New York, Washington DC, and Pennsylvania.

Some say it would have been too brave an action for our limited mind, heart, and spirit. In other words, Jesus, so embraced by pious platitudes, proves to be beyond the mettle of furiously fatuous men out to prove how tough they really are.

Death and loss demand a spirit that transcends retaliatory revenge and conquering combat. Seldom, and (obviously) not after 9/11, does anyone invoke the forgiveness of Yom Kippur or Easter Sunday following a grievous hurt. First we demand justice (read, revenge) -- then we attack. Only then do we find ourselves saying prayers for our fallen men and women.

What has become of the heart of religion?

There are many signs that religion is irrelevant in contemporary discourse and decisions having to do with matters of might and malicious menace. Islam, Christianity, and Judaism fail to impress in this our current torturous repetition of narrowness and fanaticism exercised by adherents within each of the three religious faiths.

More's the pity.

We could use some real faith.

Where shall we look?

What excuse will we offer as substitute sacrifice for truth?

Who will officiate the obsequies?

White moon breaks through.

The voidness so created within Bodhi
Is but a bubble in the ocean.
Worldly realms, countless as the dust,
Arose in this relative emptiness.

When the bubble bursts, the void's unreality
Is exposed:
How much more so is that of the three realms?
Though all return to One Nature at the source,
There are many expedient methods for the purpose.
- Surangama Sutra

A woman thinks she is dying and that friends abandon her. She might be right about both. Her mood is certain skepticism about what doctors cannot find in her.

"There is no such thing as a romantic experience. There are romantic memories, and there is the desire of romance -- that is all. I myself would sacrifice everything for a new experience, and I know there is no such thing as a new experience at all. I think I would more readily die for what I do not believe in than for what I hold to be true. I would go to the stake for a sensation and be a skeptic to the last! Only one thing remains infinitely fascinating to me, the mystery of moods. Sometimes I think that the artistic life is a long and lovely suicide, and am not sorry that it is so."
(--Oscar Wilde)

Perhaps we do eliminate what we think we are by drips and drabs. What's left afterwards? An unfair question. We can only know the second before the end of knowing. The woman takes comfort in her knowing. No one else does.

Creativity is no death and no extinction of it.

Like the Zen Case where if you have no staff it will be taken away.

We only lose what we do not have.

Take two, call morning; if one, no call.

This is silly. What nonsense.

Do all beings come to dwell in their true home?

May they!

We can say yes to any part of the day, to any part of our life. Or we can hold no as yes-shattering cudgel each time someone invites us to view the passing yes from the place we are.

Cold cliffs, more beautiful the deeper you enter
Yet no one travels this road.
White clouds idle about the tall crags;
On the green peak a single monkey wails.
What other companions do I need?
I grow old doing as I please.
Though face and form alter with the years,
I hold fast to the pearl of the mind.
- Han shan

It rains and rains.

A person should desire no other path, even if he is at the summit of contemplation; on this road he walks safely. All blessings come to us through our Lord. He will teach us, for in beholding his life we find that he is the best example.
What more do we desire from such a good friend at our side?
(-- St. Teresa of Avila, 1515-1582)

No room of the inner castle, said Teresa, should be left unexplored. They are each places where water reaches. Room of joy. Room of depression. Room of insight. Room of pain. Room of doubt. Room of yes.

Of course there is a room of no. Just off the room of fear.

In each room, the reality of God takes place.

We are not to shun where we live.

Going on...hearing no...feeling fear...surrendering control...saying yes.

Passing through the place we are.

Language speaks. What's more, silence is its own language. Its dialect is sacredness.

All sacred places seek us to recognize them. Sacred places are everywhere found and nowhere absent. We humans might just be opportunities for sacredness to root itself to sentience.

Or, we might merely enjoy pepperoni and sausage pizza because it tastes good.

Mind set free in the Dharma-realm,
I sit at the moon-filled window
Watching the mountains with my ears,
Hearing the stream with open eyes.
Each molecule preaches perfect law,
Each moment chants true sutra:
The most fleeting thought is timeless,
A single hair's enough to stir the sea.
- Shutaku

Rain is coming again. Ground shrugs. Still damp from last torrent days ago, ground remains dark brown under yellow leaves on autumn green.

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
that 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.

Accept what comes from silence.
Make the best you can of it.
Of the little words that come
out of the silence, like prayers
prayed back to the one who prays,
make a poem that does not disturb
the silence from which it came.
(Poem: "How To Be a Poet" by Wendell Berry from Given: New Poems.)

Maybe we're all poets. There is a silence in every word. Small words carry small silences. Great words reveal profound silence.

In such silence we pray back sacredness with stillness and sentience.

No need ever worry what to say.

Let silence reveal itself.

In your own words.

Without speaking.

Johanna Macy tells us to act our age. At 13.7 billion years of age, it is about time we recognize our interconnection and the mistakes we make when we fail to.

Magnanimous Mind is like a mountain,
Stable and impartial.
Exemplifying the ocean,
It is tolerant and views everything
From the broadest perspective.
- Dogen

It is time to turn to one another and live close and quiet.

A human being is part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. We experience ourselves, our thoughts and feelings as something separate from the rest. A kind of optical delusion of consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from the prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. The true value of a human being is determined by the measure and the sense in which they have obtained liberation from the self. We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if humanity is to survive.
(-- Albert Einstein)

Rose crosses Elm with us. Walking back to shop from Camden Opera House we pass Gilbert's pub where five guys are calling loudly to passersby something about walking too fast. The fragrance of stale beer dances with their laughter.

Back at car alongside bookshop and bakery lights are out inside -- Peggy's group on non-violent communication has gone.

We look out at harbor.

On wind direction pipe up above deck, waving earth flag is ripped and fraying.

She told us not to be afraid of the dark.

Someone created light.

We recall wholeness.

May all names, finally, be inscribed in the Book of Life.

Deep green needles glow against a cobalt sky;
They radiate something that only few can sense.
Snow white peaks, tops shrouded in the clouds,
Shine and echo, shine and echo
Through both sides of the skin line.
Oh, in all of this does lie some deep implication,
Yet when I try to say more, I become silent, mute.
- Ji Aoi Isshi

Teshuvah, return to the light at center of each moment and each molecule -- this is how community saves each member. Letting go into wholeness within wholeness.

Captain Renault: What in heaven's name brought you to Casablanca?
Rick: My health. I came to Casablanca for the waters.
Captain Renault: The waters? What waters? We're in the desert.
Rick: I was misinformed.
(from film, Casablanca, 1942)

What waters? Can anyone tell exactly why they find themselves where they are, doing what they are doing? And if someone does enter the deep water of human self-knowing, are they willing to share that water with anyone inquiring after their motivation, intention, and inner direction? Share, not sell.

Often, we're misinformed. We want to be informed. But mistakes are made. We fail to glean that form, as the Buddhists say, is emptiness. Instead we try to shape and form our impressions and desires into something solid and secure that will save us from something else we cannot even name.

A poem, as a manifestation of language and thus essentially dialogue, can be a message in a bottle, sent out in the - not always greatly hopeful - belief that somewhere and sometime it could wash up on land, on heartland perhaps. Poems in this sense, too, are under way: they are making toward something. (-- Paul Celan)

Yom Kippur invites us to speak -- to make toward God, to another -- about mistakes we've made.

Articulating and correcting mistakes, or perhaps better said, returning to original wholeness, is holy attention.

"Attentiveness," went one of Paul Celan's favorite quotes by Malebranche, a 17th century French Catholic priest, "is the natural prayer of the soul."

We pray tonight for all names to be written, finally, naturally, in the Book of Life.

Play with new schedule at breakfast in Corner Shop -- silent sittings at evening conversations, incorporating prayer, and widening events -- this day spent mostly in Rockport.

When we cross parking lot later at Shaws market, Justin is walking out to gather shopping carts. We greet and hug hello. He is glad to see familiar faces.

Earlier we stop at Quarry Hill nursing facility to say hello to Fanny. She points out dahlia on window shelf. The flowering is lovely. She says she stays put. It is painful to move.

One who has attained the Tao
is master of herself,
and the universe is
dissolved for her.
Throw her in the company
of the noisy and the dirty,
and she will be like a lotus flower
growing from muddy water,
touched by it,
yet unstained.
- T'u Lung

The best we can do is pray. We say --"Au voir, Fanny!" We wish her well -- courage, peace, and rest. She says these are good things.

Leaving the food market earlier we call to Justin ranging over white lines to corral rolling carts, wave and say -- "Goodnight Justin!"

That's what prayer is -- saying hello, saying goodbye.

And feeling each utterance.

The poignance of passing.

Pronouncing each name.

Prayer at play.

Walking tree-lined road in misty rain.

Keep your heart clear and transparent
and you will never be bound.
A single disturbed thought, though,
creates ten thousand distractions.
Let myriad things captivate you
and you will go further and further astray.
How painful to see people
all wrapped up in themselves.
- Ryokan

We never really find what we look for.

We walk. Then turn. Head back. Sit and eat at corner table as water pours to lowering tide.

Each mouthful a prayer not needing to be said aloud. Each step what meditation would be if it did not calculate itself.

In this way we come to edge of sleep. In respectful silence. Another day.

No longer looking.

Ready to see.

Hard blowy rain. Brook rages against banks and under footbridge. One day later, one full flow. Tent stands firm and unfazed. We cannot cross second fork. We'll have to think of second bridge.

"Mind and body dropped off; dropped off mind and body! This state should be experienced by everyone; it is like piling fruit into a basket without a bottom, like pouring water into a bowl with a pierced hole; however much you may pile or pour you cannot fill it up. When this is realized the pail bottom is broken through. But while there is still a trace of conceptualism which makes you say 'I have this understanding' or 'I have that realization', you are still playing with unrealities."
- Dogen Zenji

Water passing through. Fruit falling through.

We stay in the emptiness. Emptiness goes through our life every time we try to grasp our life to make sense of it. Nothing doing.

So we let go a while and stay put. Wonderful rain falling, falling -- seeking ground, sluicing brook to pond to river to ocean.

Maybe it doesn't matter what we think. Wind and water will be wind and water.

Warn those who are rich in this world's goods that they are not to look down on other people; and not to set their hopes on money, which is untrustworthy, but on God who, out of his riches, gives us all that we need for our happiness. Tell them that they are to do good, and be rich in good works, to be generous and willing to share -- this is the way they can save up a good capital sum for the future if they want to make sure of the only life that is real.
My dear Timothy, take great care of all that has been entrusted to you. Have nothing to do with the pointless philosophical discussions and antagonistic beliefs of the 'knowledge' which is not knowledge at all; by adopting this, some have gone right away from the faith. Grace be with you.
(from letter of Paul, 1 Timothy 6)

The life of a hermitage is like water going through an empty parenthesis -- nothing special. From morning coffee and afternoon tea to pumpernickel and onion pretzels early evening -- one thing leads to another.

We forget, time to time, who we are and what we are doing. It's daunting to try to make sense of mystery. We are irrelevant. Our life smaller than raindrops. We fall to ground without knowing direction or purpose.

Gregory (540-604) tried to get the attention of his compatriots (then and now, men):
There is something else about the life of the shepherds, dearest brothers, which discourages me greatly. But lest what I claim should seem unjust to anyone, I accuse myself of the very same thing, although I fall into it unwillingly -- compelled by the urgency of these barbarous times. I speak of our absorption in external affairs; we accept the duties of office, but by our actions we show that we are attentive to other things. We abandon the ministry of preaching and, in my opinion, are called bishops to our detriment, for we retain the honourable office but fail to practice the virtues proper to it. Those who have been entrusted to us abandon God, and we are silent. They fall into sin, and we do not extend a hand of rebuke.
But how can we who neglect ourselves be able to correct someone else? We are wrapped up in worldly concerns, and the more we devote ourselves to external things, the more insensitive we become in spirit.
(from A homily of Pope St Gregory the Great)

It will rain for a few days.

Our spirits might grow damp.

We'll try to remain sensitive.

Within and without.

... (...) ( )

Damp October sweat on stone and falling leaf. The day blows near wet.

To shake off the dust of human ambition
I sit on moss in Zen robes of stillness,
While through the window,
In the setting sun of late autumn,
Falling leaves whirl and drop to the stone dais.
- Tesshu Tokysai

Tarps are set and tied over tent at site above moist but unflowing brook. Another place of hermitage. Cutting intrusive saplings, stacking short-sticks by tree, half-hitches shoring hemp twine through grommets sloping for runoff from upcoming storms.

We walk the mountain with Cesco. We sit on toboggan run and gangway up off Hosmer Pond as wind skips over water.

We step a few days from shop. Uncertain whether to travel to maritimes, we settle for walking today into and back to hermitage.

Solitude is an empty place. Community surrounds emptiness.

Both solitude and community are necessary in order to face what is taking place in our lives and in the world. However we understand the notion and/or reality of God, we cannot ignore the unfolding manifestation of what is taking place in our midst.

Empty places are nothing special. We need to visit empty places often. Some see emptiness as the dwelling place of what we call God. Is it true? Is God nothing other? Is nothing other, or no other, the environment, if you will, the dwelling place of what is called God?

I went into the woods yesterday. Solitude created a space enfolded by green canvas. A temporary tent went up -- a place away from hermitage and chapel/zendo. A place of poustinia. Poustinia, a Russian word, means ‘desert’, a place to meet Christ in silence, solitude and prayer. Community in solitude.

Let the sun and the moon revolve by themselves!
When I have time I read the sutras,
When I am tired I sleep on my straw bed.
If you ask me, “Whom do you see in your dreams?”
I would answer,
No one special.
- Saigyo

Ayya Khema, a Buddhist nun in the Theravada tradition, writes on "Nothing Special" --
Spiritual practice is often misunderstood and believed to be something special. It isn't. It is one's whole body and mind. Nothing special at all, just oneself. Many people think of it as meditation or ritual, devotional practice or chanting to be performed at a specific time in a certain place. Or it may be connected with a special person without whom the practice cannot occur. These are views and opinions that lead to nothing.

In the best case they may result in sporadic practice and in the worst case, they lead to fracturing ourselves, making two, three or four people out of ourselves when we aren't even one whole yet.

Namely, the ordinary person doing all the ordinary worldly chores and the other one who becomes spiritual at certain times in diverse ways. Meditation, rituals, devotional practice, chanting, certain places, certain people can all be added to our lives but they are not the essence of our spirituality.

Our practice consists of constant purification; there's nothing else to be done. Eventually we will arrive at a point where our thought processes and feelings are not only kind and loving but also full of wisdom, bringing benefit to ourselves and others.
("Nothing Special" by Sister Ayya Khema)

Bringing benefit to ourselves and others -- solitude in community. There's nothing else to be done but realize the interconnected and non-divided reality of existence. It seems that our most difficult task is dismantling the illusion of separation without attempting to fuse fast what is on its own. This work is the mystery of the middle. It is our true home. It is dwelling in the midst of this and that -- in a place called not this/not that. We can barely decipher where this place actually is -- but I suspect, it is home. And it is nothing special. We suffer when we fail to find ourselves in our authentic yet variable home. Home, for us, is a variable feast.

The realization of where our dukkha [suffering, or dissatisfaction] comes from must be followed by the understanding that disliking it will not make it go away; only letting go of wanting makes dukkha disappear, which means unequivocal acceptance. Accepting oneself results in being able to accept others. The difficulty with other people is that they present a mirror in which we can see our own mistakes. How useful it is to have such a mirror. When we live with others we can see ourselves as if it were a mirror image and eventually we learn to be together like milk with water, which completely blend. It is up to each one of us to blend; if we wait for others to do it we are not practicing. This is a difficult undertaking but also a very important one.

Eventually we will create the inner comfort to expand our consciousness and awareness to an understanding of universality.

The world at large is very busy and we get caught up in extraneous matters. The world inside is also very busy but we can do something about that. We can quiet it down to see more clearly. The way of spiritual practice is nothing special, just our whole body and mind.
(in "Nothing Special" by Ayya Khema, from the January 1994 issue of GASSHO, a Buddhist electronic newsletter, published by DharmaNet International)

Each person has a poustinia. It is our desert place -- a little bit away from busyness, a space in heart and mind reserved for the emptiness we must face. It is here I carry our koan: "Embodying the dwelling place of the Alone; stepping aside to make room for another." If embodying emptiness is our incarnational task, that prospect seems unattractive -- thus it is understandable that we are uninterested in the spiritual life. If God meets us in the solitude of our heart -- a heart that sometimes is broken -- then it is no surprise we prefer the company of others we believe will save us from what we call desolation and loneliness.

The empty dwelling place of the desert, the deep woods of solitude, is a resting place on the journey of the spiritual life. That resting place is temporary. Strangers pass by it. We sometimes see them pass. They sometimes see us in our solitude. A simple gaze. An unexpected meeting. This encounter asks us to welcome one another in an open space, in the emptiness of no expectations, in the shared presence of nothing special. The mere fact of it. Not making anything other of it -- just that it is taking place. One hand reaches out to touch another. We are invited to make room as time touches and changes hands.

Here we are thrown into another koan, a variation of "not two/not one" -- this one is phrased "What is beyond separation/before union?" The response that reveals itself to us is our marriage to what is taking place.

Catherine de Hueck Doherty writes about poustinia:
Touching God
As I have explained to you before, when a Russian goes into a
poustinia, he goes for others as well as for himself - but
predominantly for others. Upon returning, he should tell members of
his family or community what he has received during his stay in the
poustinia. If one were in a Russian village, these words would be
meant for everyone in the village. I do this at the community in
Madonna House. I either catch them at supper, or later on in the day
which follows my poustinia. I bow before them and say, "May the
peace of the Blessed Trinity be with you," or something similar, and
they answer, "And also with you." I then share with them a word from
the Lord.
Someone may ask, "How do you hear this `word of the Lord'?"
Let me explain.
It is understood that since the reason for entering the poustinia
is one of listening to God in prayer and fasting, the first act of a
poustinik is to fold the wings of his intellect and open the doors of his
heart. The Russians would say: Put your head into your heart and try
to achieve a deep and profound interior silence. It is then, when one is
deeply silent, that God begins to speak.
When I say "God begins to speak," I mean that the mind is
purified, the heart is at peace, and out of the depths of both come
forth the gifts or the fruits of the Holy Spirit. Quietly, imperceptibly,
out of this overshadowing of the Holy Spirit comes a word, a thought,
or a sentence, as the case may be.
Someone might say, "All this sounds very mystical." There is a
difference between what the East means by mystical and what the
West means. I think the East would call normal many things that the
West might term mystical. If you are in the poustinia and God knocks
on your door and speaks to you, that doesn't sound mystical to me; it
sounds quite normal. He said He would speak to us.
(from POUSTINIA, Encountering God in Silence, Solitude and Prayer, book by Catherine de Hueck Doherty)

Let's return to this "normal." Our conversation with, as, in, and through God is our normal (some say mystical) reality. But we have, unfortunately, manufactured an artificial environment of blather and noise, opinion and propaganda, dogma and doctrine that substitutes for the real thing.

The real thing is innocent silence and loving resting presence with the ever-present and ordinary manifestation of God within each being, each thing, each moment, and each appearance suddenly showing up in our midst.

Throughout history there have been individuals attempting to solidify these complementary paths approaching the dwelling place of what is holy -- the solitary and the solidary -- being alone and with others.

In early October we celebrate Francis of Assisi. He wandered between solitude and community. He understood the family of all things, the family of all beings. St. Bruno, born at Cologne about the year 1030 and died 6 October 1101, was another of these individuals.
St. Bruno's distinction as the founder of an order was that he introduced into the religious life the mixed form, or union of the eremitical and cenobite modes of monasticism, a medium between the Camaldolese Rule and that of St. Benedict. He wrote no rule, but he left behind him two institutions which had little connection with each other--that of Dauphiné and that of Calabria. The foundation of Calabria, somewhat like the Camaldolese, comprised two classes of religious: hermits, who had the direction of the order, and cenobites who did not feel called to the solitary life; it only lasted a century, did not rise to more than five houses, and finally, in 1191, united with the Cistercian Order. The foundation of Grenoble, more like the rule of St. Benedict, comprised only one kind of religious, subject to a uniform discipline, and the greater part of whose life was spent in solitude, without, however, the complete exclusion of the conventual life. This life spread throughout Europe, numbered 250 monasteries, and in spite of many trials continues to this day.
(on St. Bruno, in Catholic Encyclopedia, http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/03014b.htm)

We seem to be always on our way home. Where is home? I don't know. Perhaps home is contemplation of fullness and emptiness. Perhaps home is conversation held between silence and words. Perhaps home is correspondence between solitude and community.

Is home the "between," the exchange and the touching of dyadic complementarity? Is it the "sandokai" wherein one and two join hands?

Christians say that Christ -- though he was in the form of God, "emptied himself." Buddhists say form is emptiness, and emptiness form.

In The Art of Living (2001) the 14th Dalai Lama says, "As your insight into the ultimate nature of reality is deepened and enhanced, you will develop a perception of reality from which you will perceive phenomena and events as sort of illusory, illusion-like, and this mode of perceiving reality will permeate all your interactions with reality. […] Even emptiness itself, which is seen as the ultimate nature of reality, is not absolute, nor does it exist independently. We cannot conceive of emptiness as independent of a basis of phenomena, because when we examine the nature of reality, we find that it is empty of inherent existence. Then if we are to take that emptiness itself is an object and look for its essence, again we will find that it is empty of inherent existence. Therefore the Buddha taught the emptiness of emptiness."
(http://www.thebigview.com/buddhism/index.html)

Where is this "home" we are being called to? Are we being called to let go of all the illusions and distractions created by ideologies, dogmas, and doctrines telling us what to believe and what kind of future world must come to be? Are we ready to relinquish what we have come to think of as my country, my religion, my people, and my God? Are we ready to open our hands and let fall to ground what no longer nourishes and satisfies?

The Future

For God's sake, be done
with this jabber of "a better world."
What blasphemy! No "futuristic"
twit or child thereof ever
in embodied light will see
a better world than this, though they
foretell inevitably a worse.
Do something! Go cut the weeds
beside the oblivious road. Pick up
the cans and bottles, old tires,
and dead predictions. No future
can be stuffed into this presence
except by being dead. The day is
clear and bright, and overhead
the sun not yet half finished
with his daily praise.
(Poem: "The Future" by Wendell Berry)

Let our hands do something. Let them open the gate and invite one and all home.

It is time to come home, to praise, to surrender to what is calling us home.

Do we hear the lovely silence, the sweet solitude, and profoundly beautiful community of our true home?

What is taking place beyond separation/before union?

What is, God, you, me, right here?

Rest easy -- it's nothing special.

Full of joy; full of praise!

Today in Iraq five more American soldiers are killed. Remember Iraq?

To practice Zen, you need deep roots.
People with deep roots are rare.
In the past anyone could practice Zen.
But not now.
Zen depends completely on yourself.
It's much harder, especially now.
- Sheng-hi

Why not now?

We honor Francis of Assisi today.

He knew how useless and cruel deaths are in a stupid politically religious war.

Francis sorrowed then.

We sorrow now.

As dusk settles we finish burying Sando up hill from brook where Ragged begins to climb.

We experience again -- after hours digging dirt, rock, and root -- why a farmer many years ago named the pre-parceled land "Rocky Hill Farm."

May all beings be at ease!
Let none deceive another,
Or despise any being in any state.
Let none through anger or ill-will
Wish harm upon another.
Even as a mother protects with her life
Her child, her only child,
So with a boundless heart
Should one cherish all living beings:
Radiating kindness over the entire world.
(from The Buddha's Words on Kindness, Metta Sutta)

By bridge, up hill, encircled by stones -- one we've cherished is under single lantern vigil candle.

Tomorrow we'll witness two other beings into their marriage at Ogunquit. She and he will pronounce themselves willing to dwell in the thin place, the middle place where past and future change hands, a place that is beyond separation/before union -- in other words, where one and one is not two, nor is one and one...one. Then what is it?

Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.
Blessed are the clean of heart, for they will see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.
(from the Beatitudes,Sermon on the Mount, in Matthew 5)

Marriage is what is taking place.

"What is" might be what marriage has always longed to be. For something, or two people, to be "what is" means to embody the manifestation which is each moment, each event. Not two, not one -- merely whole sight -- the pronounced willingness to enter into and pass through the reality of the exquisite ordinariness of life with one another.

What is taking place between one another?

Life itself!

With one another -- dwelling in the sacred ordinary, stepping through its midst with kindness and love -- each is happy, safe, and free from fear.

Radiating kindness over the entire world
Spreading upwards to the skies,
And downwards to the depths;
Outwards and unbounded,
Freed from hatred and ill-will.
Whether standing or walking, seated or lying down
Free from drowsiness,
One should sustain this recollection.
This is said to be the sublime abiding.
By not holding to fixed views,
The pure-hearted one, having clarity of vision,
Being freed from all sense desires,
Is not born again into this world.
(from The Buddha's Words on Kindness, Metta Sutta)

Goodbye Sando!

Hello Renee and Patrick!

After long, slow morning mountain walk we stop at meditation cabin. Sando goes in, lays down, and stays all day.

Charlotte visits, bringing her flowers. Saskia sits with her as afternoon dims with wind and rain. I converse with root and rock digging into mountain for resting place.

At 5:30pm Dr Jim arrives.

In Robert Pirsig's novel, Lila, an Indian is asked the question, "What kind of dog is that?"
His response came slowly and thoughtfully, "That's a good dog". (Ch 32)

Sando, our good dog, quietly, and with tired grace, dies.

After long silent vigil by Cesco, Saskia, and I, Sando's body remains for tonight in the chapel with the archangels, under the quiet watchfulness of mother/child Icon, sitting Buddha, standing Francis, framed Dogen, and wooden cross radiating circles of welcome.

We already miss her.

We took the day to spend quietly at hermitage with Sando. There was no conversation at bookshop this evening.

We four walked easily together the mountain early. We thought of going in to the shop.

Instead we cleared fell wood out from mostly dry brook. The incursion happened last winter. There was a large tree trunk spanning what we call Sando's pool up beyond crossing footbridge. Recently the tree had split and angled in brook. (Sando walks up to where we work pulling twigs and leaves, ambles into concave collection of water from recent rain, and drinks.)

We sit on bench. She's on ground near wooden bridge built two summers ago at a retreat workday. Behind us pickaxe and spade lean against tree. Turned earth and torn root show richer shade of brown near graves of Jitai, Koto, and Mini.

Back of barn and house we tear through heavy growth over septic, cut fledgling maples and rip out thorny stalks. We get out extension ladder. I climb high to saw limbs that reach over barn. We want to eliminate rubbing edge of leaf and branch on roofing asphalt and siding shingle. The highest branch would not let go. Holding ladder with left arm through rungs and wrapped around tree, right arm extends high and saws repeatedly with bowsaw. Tough limb hangs by willpower.

Blade un-seizes for final few thrusts overhead. Rest. Saw. Rest. Saw. Saskia gathers what has made it to ground successfully. Two dogs peek around barn, wander, settle to ground themselves. Sando barks with weakened voice at black lab next door charging down hill from neighbor's house. Who will protect us next time?

We finish. Get water to drink. Take leash. Walk up back past pickaxe, spade, bench, bridge, brook-pool, hillside climb, worn path to T-bar, vacant snowbowl. Cross back over ball field. Walk road to dooryard and house.

A brief stop in cabin. Sit a spell. Tomorrow is feast of archangels Gabriel, Michael, and Raphael.

Gabriel seems to be composed of the Hebrew words, gebher: man, and 'el: God. It means, therefore, "Man of God", or, "Strength of God."
Michael from the Hebrew Mikha'el, meaning: "Who is as God"?
Raphael, from the Hebrew rapha': to heal, and 'el: God, means "God heals."

The vet said Saskia should call him in the morning. If Saskia and Sando say so, he'd come out to house.

We've had a good day together.

One day.

A lifetime.

We have come here to see what is taking place.

Do we see what is taking place?

In the still night by the vacant window,
Wrapped in monk's robe I sit in meditation.
Navel and nostrils lines up straight;
Ears paired to the slope of the shoulders.
Window whitens -- the moon comes up;
Rain's stopped, but drops go on dripping.
Wonderful -- the moon of this moment,
Distant, vast.
- Ryokan (1758-1831)

The chanting of Heart Sutra is wonderfully of a piece tonight. Candlelight in cabin and at table lights up self. When we realize self, we realize nothing excluded. One person, one thing awakens, everywhere, everyone, and everything is awake.

"A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise." (Aldo Leopold, American ecologist, 1887-1948)

War ends here. Community begins here.

Hands together, bowing deeply -- here.

Here wonderful work done by what is taking place.

This is what we come to see.