The trouble with contemplation is that no one owns it. It can't be regulated. No vending machine dispenses it for a quarter. In other words, stop talking about it.

"What should we do?" That's the question Luke in chapter 3 puts repeatedly to John in the wilderness.

Magnanimous Mind is like a mountain,
Stable and impartial.
Exemplifying the ocean,
It is tolerant and views everything
From the broadest perspective.
- Dogen (1200-1253)

First, we should listen. We should do what we are.

It is beyond us all to figure out why we turn deaf ear to the cries for help raised up from our midst. We do not listen. We only recalculate what is for our benefit, then mouth our responses from that narrow sliver of self-interest.

God utters me like a word containing a partial thought of himself.
[--Thomas Merton: Seeds of Contemplation]

Merton disappeared thirty eight years ago today in Thailand. Has he reappeared somewhere else? Who can tell. For me, today, he reappears in his words.

I am a partial utterance of God.

What am I?

Good enough for now.

The thing about impermanence is that everything is impermanent.

Try as we will, we cannot hold on to anything.

So, let's let go.

Are you concerned with enlightenment,
which implies a static attainment,
or rather enlightening,
an unending process
of continual opening?
Are you concerned with answers
or rather with boundless questions?
For the answer
never fails to kill enlightening;
the mind then reverts
to the static knowing,
soon becomes caught
again in the web
of associations and
reduces the entirety
of the world to the mundane.
- Ji Aoi Isshi

If someone finds you unacceptable, be unacceptable. Saint Francis called that perfect joy. Some of that joy is mine today.

“A voice of one calling in the desert,
‘Prepare the way for the Lord,
make straight paths for him.
Every valley shall be filled in,
every mountain and hill made low.
The crooked roads shall become straight,
the rough ways smooth.
And all mankind will see God’s salvation.’”
(Isaiah 40:3ff)

Robert Frost's poem "The Road Not Taken" is not as simple and playful as it seems.

In Robert Frost: The Trial by Existence, Elizabeth Shepley Sergeant locates in one of Frost's letters the source for "The Road Not Taken." To Susan Hayes Ward the poet wrote on February 10, 1912:
Two lonely cross-roads that themselves cross each other I have walked several times this winter without meeting or overtaking so much as a single person on foot or on runners. The practically unbroken condition of both for several days after a snow or a blow proves that neither is much travelled. Judge then how surprised I was the other evening as I came down one to see a man, who to my own unfamiliar eyes and in the dusk looked for all the world like myself, coming down the other, his approach to the point where our paths must intersect being so timed that unless one of us pulled up we must inevitably collide. I felt as if I was going to meet my own image in a slanting mirror. Or say I felt as we slowly converged on the same point with the same noiseless yet laborious stride as if we were two images about to float together with the uncrossing of someone's eyes. I verily expected to take up or absorb this other self and feel the stronger by the addition for the three-mile journey home. But I didn't go forward to the touch. I stood still in wonderment and let him pass by; and that, too, with the fatal omission of not trying to find out by a comparison of lives and immediate and remote interests what could have brought us by crossing paths to the same point in a wilderness at the same moment of nightfall. Some purpose I doubt not, if we could but have made out. I like a coincidence almost as well as an incongruity.
This portentous account of meeting "another" self (but not encountering that self directly and therefore not coming to terms with it) would eventually result in a poem quite different from "The Road Not Taken" and one that Frost would not publish for decades. Elizabeth Sergeant ties the moment with Frost's decision to go off at this time to some place where he could devote more time to poetry. He had also, she implies, filed away his dream for future poetic use.
(By George Montiero, From Robert Frost and the New England Renaissance. Lexington, KY: The University Press of Kentucky, 1988. Copyright © 1988 by the UP of Kentucky.)

Today I, too, file away a dream for future use.

I accept the unacceptable.

This day. This life. This listening.

Three members of the Christian Peacemaker Team hold a news conference in London. They plead for leniency and no death penalty for the men who kidnapped them and murdered Tom Fox. "We want good to come out of this," says James Loney.

In November of 2005, Loney, Harmeet Singh Sooden and Normman Kember were kidnapped along with U.S. peace activist, Tom Fox. Fox, who was also a full-time member of the CPT team, was working in Baghdad at the time. He was murdered on March 9th 2006. The remaining three were set free on March 23rd.
(From Democracy Now, Friday, December 8th, 2006)

When John Lennon was finally given a green card and asked if he had any bad feelings about the heads of the FBI and Justice Department, he responded with a phrase that is a variation of "Time heals all wounds." We're unsure if the phrasing is: "Time wounds all heels"; or, "Time wounds; all heals".

So much depends on how and what we hear. So much depends on how we experience what we hear.

But now the Lord speaks, who created you, Jacob, who formed you, Israel: ‘Do not be afraid, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by your name, you are mine.’
(Isaiah 43:1)

It occurs to me that the name that is God's and the name that is yours and mine can also go through a twofold view.

Listen to the sound of your name in your mind and memory as spoken by your mother or your father. The sound of your name as spoken by mother/father/God resides in your being as your being.

Did Mary hear and have an immaculate sound as her origin?

What we hear is experienced by us according to the mind we listen with. With a clear mind everything can be heard with compassionate clarity. With an unclear mind things are heard with cutting intent.

Is this how the clear among us are able to transform hurt to healing, and unkindness to an experience of humility?

Time wounds. "All" heals. The words themselves have gone beyond.

We need a transforming listening to metaphor in order to go beyond ourselves -- to wake up.

Siddhartha Gautama heard with clarity what he saw with transforming awareness, and awoke.

At an early age I learned that things stand for other things. ...
I have had to look at my life. And I have escaped from madness by understanding transformation, how each thing transcends its own reality. I either go mad or I learn about metaphor.
(from "Thorazine Shuffle" by filmmaker Allie Light -- in the book Out of Her Mind: Women Writing on Madness, ed. by Rebecca Shannonhouse)

Wisdom is beyond me.

How amazing it is
That all people
Have this but cannot polish
It into bright clarity.
In darkness unawakened,
They make foolishness
Cover their wisdom.
- Hongzhi Zhengjue (1091–1157)

When I ascend beyond that which I identify with as me, I am closer to awake than when I first began.

In this, in "this" -- we are all, "all" alike.

This is our life.

I think this is true.

I think we do want good to come out of this.

Beliefs are at times unbelievable. Take the belief some hold that God the Father ordained that his son suffer and die for sins. Or the belief that some men and women will be tortured and punished with excruciating pain in hell for ever and ever without end.

In the early days many sages stressed the follies and dangers of impurity. When delusion, perverted views, and bad thinking habits are eliminated, the mind is as clear and tranquil as the autumn stream. It is pure and quiescent, placid and free from attachment.
- Master Kuei-shan Ling-yu

It seems uninteresting to believe in a place of unending torture or a God who tolerates the pain of creatures. I'll sit out that belief.

On the Subway Station

The child is speaking to the father
he is looking into the father's eyes
father doesn't answer
child is speaking Vietnamese
father doesn't answer
child is speaking English
father doesn't answer
The father is staring at a mosaic in blue and green
and lavender three small ships in harbor
set again and again in the white tiled
beautiful old unrenovated subway
station Clark Street Brooklyn
(Poem: "On the Subway Station" by Grace Paley, from Leaning Forward.)

We need renovated spirituality.

Jesus lived in the light of a loving Father encircled and permeated by Holy Spirit. (Here is a tolerable narrative.) Jesus died the same way good men die always -- at the hands of lesser men fanatic in their notions of purity and superior motivations.

Which leaves us. And our times.

Do not think for a minute that the stories of religious tradition were about some far-ago time and some other people. They are about right now. About you and me.

For God's sake, give up torture and punishment -- give up hell. Then give up false notions of God.

So as to rest in the true God who has no difficulty having been given up. Maybe laughs at it. Certainly is forgiving to all of us unknowing what we do. And goes on being God.

Somehow Christ is seen through.

I need to learn prayer.

Prayer

If we don't believe in heaven, who reads the letters we mail there
every evening?
Children send most of them, kneeling by the bedpost
imagining the universe under the care of a father
who rumbles behind the newspaper
smelling of cigarettes and Old Spice.
To grow up is to lose one's God at sea —
better to lose one than be one.
If you believe the world is perfect,
think of Keats dying young.
I never would have seen it if I hadn't believed it,
the saying goes. Somebody has to awaken us
to the time of day it is when the earth is empty
of any intention, or any human presence.

And yet it is noon, and here you are — your blue headlands
and swords, your wave-moistened silences.
As if at the heart of things
there were a heart.
(Poem: "Prayer" by James Armstrong, from Blue Lash.)

Reality has no opinion.

It just is.

As it is.

For now.

So...

The air that I breathe. The breath of One, God. Filling and emptying.

Beneath the mountain
A stream flows
On and on without end.
If one’s Zen mind is like this
Seeing into one’s nature
Cannot be far off.
- Hakuin (1686-1768)

Outside kitchen window red squirrel scampers over dust snow on hill . We are a breath's simple and humble passage through. We, unfortunately, do not yet comprehend the ins and outs of One's breath.

Isaiah pondered it. Many translations later, we read:

A shoot springs from the stock of Jesse,
a scion thrusts from his roots:
on him the spirit of the Lord rests,
a spirit of wisdom and insight,
a spirit of counsel and power,
a spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord.
(The fear of the Lord is his breath.)
He does not judge by appearances,
he gives no verdict on hearsay,
but judges the wretched with integrity,
and with equity gives a verdict for the poor of the land.
His word is a rod that strikes the ruthless,
his sentences bring death to the wicked.
(Isaiah 11: 1-4, Jerusalem Bible)

He will strike the earth with the rod of his mouth;
with the breath of his lips he will slay the wicked.
Isaiah 11:4 (New International Version)

4But with (I)righteousness He will judge the (J)poor,
And decide with fairness for the (K)afflicted of the earth;
And He will strike the earth with the (L)rod of His mouth,
And with the (M)breath of His lips He will slay the wicked.
( Isaiah 11:4 New American Standard Bible)

4But with righteousness shall he judge the poor, and reprove with equity for the meek of the earth: and he shall smite the earth: with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips shall he slay the wicked.
( Isaiah 11:4 King James Version)

4The poor and the needy
will be treated with fairness
and with justice.
His word will be law
everywhere in the land,
and criminals
will be put to death.
( Isaiah 11:4 Contemporary English Version)

4 He will give justice to the poor
and make fair decisions for the exploited.
The earth will shake at the force of his word,
and one breath from his mouth will destroy the wicked.
( Isaiah 11:4 New Living Translation)

4 but He will judge the poor righteously (E)
and execute justice for the oppressed of the land.
He will strike the land
with discipline [a] from His mouth, (F)
and He will kill the wicked (G)
with a command [b] from His lips. (H)
( Isaiah 11:4 Holman Christian Standard Bible)

4But with righteousness shall He judge the poor, and reprove with equity for the meek of the earth; and He shall smite the earth with the rod of His mouth, and with the breath of His lips shall He slay the wicked.
(21st Century King James Version)

So it goes. We all breathe the same air. With some translation, perhaps we might read:

One air,
One breath.
One life,
Each in all.

The wicked take our breath,
poison the air, our thoughts, our sight.
Dark words, insane distrust, a fetid denigration.
We choke. Cancer lung. Words rot in throat.

Return to spirit, to clear air,
See the transparency of One, God;
Inhale, exhale --
Collation of original life!

Cat stretches on lap as I write. Dog sleeps in front room after yesterday's surgery. Front window crucifix next to Mother/Child icon and seated Buddha.

The morning seems (suddenly) itself.

Yes, Itself.

I've been thinking about war.

This world
Is but
A fleeting dream
So why be alarmed
At its evanescence?
- Ikkyu (1394-1481)

The sorrow of it.

Advent Circle Lectio.

His mind is free from all thoughts.
His demeanor is still and silent.
His forehead beams with simplicity.
He is cold as autumn,
And warm as spring,
For his joy and anger
Occur as naturally
As the four seasons.
- Chuang Tzu

Henry, at end, says: "Waking is listening."

Free debt.

8 Owe nothing to anyone — except for your obligation to love one another. If you love your neighbor, you will fulfill the requirements of God’s law. 9 For the commandments say, “You must not commit adultery. You must not murder. You must not steal. You must not covet.”[a] These — and other such commandments — are summed up in this one commandment: “Love your neighbor as yourself.”[b] 10 Love does no wrong to others, so love fulfills the requirements of God’s law.
(Romans 13: 8-10, New Living Translation)

Questions?

What is God's will?

Wake up!

Let us shut out the fear of death and meditate upon immortality
Our obligation is to do God’s will, and not our own. We must remember this if the prayer that our Lord commanded us to say daily is to have any meaning on our lips. How unreasonable it is to pray that God’s will be done, and then not promptly obey it when he calls us from this world!
(from The treatise of St Cyprian on mortality)

(Ask again.) What is God's will?

Rain falls on roof. Dead mouse under bed, removed.

Open window airs room.

The field is clear. You might say, clear light. Or the field is compassion, maybe God, love itself.

The sound
of water
says
what I think.
- Chuang Tzu

When on or in the field, all is clear. The only barrier is what we hold on to, clutching the small definitions we think is our self, with resentments, grievances, anger, ego, and assorted blockages.

As he was walking by the Sea of Galilee, Jesus saw two brothers, Simon, who was called Peter, and his brother Andrew; they were making a cast in the lake with their net, for they were fishermen.
--Matthew 4:18 - 22

Fishermen fish.

The field might be the sea. It might be consciousness, or existence. Maybe we are the field.

Live well therein.

Water speaking.

Smoke from fireplace in shop returns to back room from furnace pipe and curls out from under bricks of Rumford arch. The yearly battle begins: wood stove? or open fireplace?

“I am empty of everything and there is nothing left in my mind,” said the monk to Joshu. “What do you say to that?”
Joshu said, “Cast that away.”
But the monk persisted. “I have told you, there is nothing left in me. I am completely empty. What can I cast away?”
“In that case,” replied Joshu,”keep on carrying it.”
- Joshu

On the field of consciousness everything appears and disappears. The field remains. Like a second baseman taking the baseball infield for an inning, we assume positions then exit and disappear.

Tomorrow is the feast of St Andrew.
Christmas Anticipation Prayer
Beginning on St. Andrew the Apostle's feast day, November 30, the following beautiful prayer is traditionally recited fifteen times a day until Christmas. This is a very meditative prayer that helps us increase our awareness of the real focus of Christmas and helps us prepare ourselves spiritually for His coming.

Hail and blessed be the hour and moment
In which the Son of God was born
Of the most pure Virgin Mary,
at midnight,
in Bethlehem,
in the piercing cold.
In that hour vouchsafe, I beseech Thee, O my God,
to hear my prayer and grant my desires,
[hear mention your request]
through the merits of Our Saviour Jesus Christ,
and of His blessed Mother. Amen.
http://www.catholicculture.org/lit/prayers/view.cfm?id=951

I remember the woman who taught me this prayer. She read an e.e.cummings poem once.

The world went thirty years by.

We'll think about the wood stove. We'll remember Andrew.

We'll pray toward Advent and through.

A great unkindness is inflicted by America on the people of Iraq. Their dead are strewn about the country. They are mute.

In America it is time to go shopping to honor the Prince of Peace, in whose name (curiously) war and murder occur. There is no spin to offset this stupidity. But spin many do.

Ever desireless,
One can see the mystery.
Ever desiring,
One can see the manifestations.
These two spring
From the same source
But differ in name.
- Lao tzu

It is time to admit the Christian message is delivered often by missionaries and preachers with failing emphasis. Their goading gloat about Armageddon and rapture is an embarrassment. Naive followers of simplistic narrative easily take hostile posture in defense of their certainty that God wishes (they say) to punish and condemn those not believing in him. More specifically, those who do not articulate particular formulas of belief. Many, said a woman at the shop, have had "formula conversions." To them, anyone not reciting word for word their statements of belief or testimony, are outside and alien to "the" true belief. The presumption and rote inanity staggers. This view is a learning that rivets fast the mind. If learning it can be called.

The enemy has hounded my spirit,
he has crushed my life to the ground,
he has shut me in darkness, like the dead of long ago.
So my spirit trembles within me,
my heart turns to stone.
(--from Psalm 143)

This is not a dirge, not a lament. It is a song of despair. There is no hope. Sorrow would be a step up. The song of despair is cold listening.

And yet, and yet, and yet. We hear a quiet sound. Something ends. Something begins. Are we still listening?

Advent nears. The feast of Christ the King was flat and uninspiring in today's delegitimized metaphor of regal rule. Advent, at least, brings a mind capable of contemplating a new start.

If we don't wake up -- now -- we might never.
If the path doesn't appear -- now -- it might not.
If the light isn't seen -- now -- darkness slaughters.
And, if we are not born into true wholeness -- now -- we remain partial and pathetic.

Let us say now an embodied prayer of kindness. End disembodied ugliness.

Begin the loveliness of incarnation with something true.

Redeem the time.

Unlearn everything.

Soon, I suspect, the switch will happen.

This is the covenant I will make with the House of Israel when those days arrive – it is the Lord who speaks. Deep within them I will plant my Law, writing it on their hearts. Then I will be their God and they shall be my people
-- Jeremiah 31:33

All the stern-faced angry Jesus-will-condemn-you types will suddenly stop dead in their tracks.

It will occur to them that they've been terribly wrong.

They will weep.

Finally they will understand their own hearts.

There is where God comes through.

Truth is unrelenting.

Called from. Called out. Called to.

What does it mean to be called out?
ecclesi-.
Main Entry: ecclesi-
Variant(s): or ecclesio-
Function: combining form
Etymology: Late Latin ecclesia, from Greek ekklEsia assembly of citizens, church, from ekkalein to call forth, summon, from ex- + kalein to call -- more at: church
http://www.webster.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?va=ecclesio

"Church" has become a nest. Very temporary.

If in a storm in a desolate terrain you are called out, be prepared to leave that place. If in a rich palace you are called out, be prepared to leave that place. If in solitude, if in community, you are called out -- leave that place. But only if you are foolish enough to follow truth.

What is the sequel to truth?

Shut up and go home!

Home, like truth, is nowhere we know.

In this silence and source, there is no knowing wherefore or why. Truth is its own relentless presence. Only enter. Only engage. Only disappear.

Too many steps have been
Taken returning to the root
And the source.
Better to have been blind
And deaf from the beginning!
Dwelling in one’s true abode,
Unconcerned with that without -
The river flows tranquilly
On and the flowers are red.
- Kakuan (1100-1200)

Leave everything behind. The next step contains the everything you are to also leave behind when you take the next next step.

I have moments in which I understand that there is no one who owns the narrative of my life, no one to whom the events of my life are happening, that all of creation is a huge, interconnected, amazing production of events unfolding in concert with each other, connected to each other, dependent on each other, with no separation at all. When these moments happen, I feel happy, at ease, and grateful. I think of them as experiences of enlightenment. They are real and I trust them, but they don’t last. However clearly I see, however much I think, “Now I will never lose this perspective,” my mind makes wrong turns and I do lose it.

When I discover that I am-once again-confused, I try to remember that the habit of return is what matters. I credit myself with the insights I’ve had and assume that I can get them back. I think about the Buddha charging his monks with the responsibility to go on by themselves. I think about the geese, programmed for their journey, and I imagine that we are programmed for our journey as well. I pay attention. I make course corrections. I think about “Strive on with diligence,” or “Move with sureness into the future,” and I remember that I don’t need to move into the whole of the future. Just the next step.
(-- Sylvia Boorstein, Shambhala Sun | September 2002, "The Buddha's Four Noble Truths")

What is truth for me? Dare ask?

For this I was born and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice."

Pilate said to him, "What is truth?"
(-- John 18: 37-38)

The most eloquent response in all of scripture is what is recorded as Jesus' response to the question of Pilate.

Do you remember it?

(Silence).

Yes, it was, and is, silence.

Morning light.

Seed breaking bird.

Called out to next step.

If we run into each other some time ahead, please tell me your name.

That's my final line. I write it because I don't ever know who anyone is. Appearances are full of mystery. As much is concealed as is revealed.

"As is" reveals itself in ways mostly unclear to us. That's why Zen masters and poets both appeal to us and leave us questioning.

Happy Continuation Day

If you look deeply into the palm of your hand, you will see your parents and all generations of your ancestors. All of them are alive in this moment. Each is present in your body. You are the continuation of each of these people. To be born means that something which did not exist comes into existence. But the day we are “born” is not our beginning. It is a day of continuation. But that should not make us less happy when we celebrate our “Happy Continuation Day.”
Since we are never born, how can we cease to be? This is what the Heart Sutra reveals to us. When we have tangible experience of non-birth and non-death, we know ourselves beyond duality. The meditation on “no separate self” is one way to pass through the gate of birth and death.
Your hand proves that you have never been born and you will never die. The thread of life has never been interrupted from time without beginning until now. Previous generations, all the way back to single cell beings, are present in your hand at this moment. You can observe and experience this. Your hand is always available as a subject for meditation.
(--Thich Nhat Hanh, from Present Moment, Wonderful Moment)

Lori's grandma Mary died the other day. That, and Jon's good friend hauled off and found himself in a heap of hoosegow this week. This morning wind blows easterly and windowpanes are wet. The celebration of gratefulness strains on days not earmarked for it. And yet, there is always poetry.

The Summer You Learned to Swim
for Lea

The summer you learned to swim
was the summer I learned to be at peace with myself.
In May you were afraid to put your face in the water
But by August, I was standing in the pool once more
when you dove in, then retreated to the wall saying
You forgot to say Sugar! So I said Come on Sugar, you can do it
and you pushed off and swam to me and held on
laughing, your hair stuck to your cheeks—
you hiccupped with joy and swam off again.

And I dove in too, trying new things.
I tried not giving advice. I tried waking early to pray. I tried
not rising in anger. Watching you I grew stronger—
your courage washed away my fear.

All day I worked hard thinking of you.
In the evening I walked the long hill home.
You were at the top, waving your small arms,
pittering down the slope to me and I lifted you high
so high to the moon. That summer all the world
was soul and water, light glancing off peaks.
You learned the turtle, the cannonball, the froggy, and the flutter
And I learned to stand and wait for you to swim to me.
(Poem: "The Summer You Learned to Swim" by Michael Simms, from The Happiness of Animals. Monkey Sea Editions.)

Courage can wash away fear. Not fighting courage, but attention courage -- the kind of heart that sees kind heart as a continuation worth attending to -- we learn to serve, to stand and wait.

So it is that the mysteries of Christ will not be completed until the end of time, because he has arranged that the completion of his mysteries in us and in the Church will only be achieved at the end of time.
(from The treatise of St John Eudes on the kingdom of Jesus, Office of Readings, Fri.24Nov06)

I like the notion it is we who will complete and continue what has been begun with attentive courage -- to put a face on kindness.

For, what else was this Jesus about? But facing kindness with attentive courage -- saying: learn to make your way through this way of being!

Dive in. Try new things. Put down all formulas of conversion and belief.

Swim in the completing continuation of this day, these faces, our time together, the name you reveal to me each time you show up.

Presence, not kingdom.

It's right here.

Right now.

What do we make of it?

Waddya say?

Gratitude.

For everything. Today.

I never cite Buddha’s words
Or the words of Zen patriarchs
When I teach.
All I do is comment directly
On people themselves.
That takes care of everything.
I don’t have to quote either the
Buddha Dharma or the Zen Dharma.
I don’t have to when I can clear
Everything up for you by
Commenting directly on you
And your personal concerns
Right here and now.
I’ve no reason to preach
About Buddhism or Zen.
- Bankei (1622-1693)

Gave talk to group of men yesterday entitled "Lifetime Recovery -- A Spirituality That Everyday Uncovers."

Truth is that which is uncovered. What is truth? Mahatma Gandhi said, Yes -- what is is Truth. He'd held that God is truth. Then he realized that Truth is God. There's a notable distinction.

For the men exploring spirituality together yesterday it is a useful consideration that "truth" is everywhere everyday uncovering. Whether you call Truth 'God,' or God 'Truth" -- it is useful to remember that the Greek word for 'truth' -- Aletheia in Ancient Greek -- means not merely ”truth” as we think of it in English. It means literally, un-covered, dis-covered, discovery, unveiled.

This leads me to wonder. To the question: "Where is God?" The response: "Where are you?" Or, "What are you looking at (or as)?" To the question: What is Truth?" The response: "What are you uncovering, discovering, unveiling?" That which longs to be revealed is the truth always right here with us.

Truth right here with us is God's very name.

Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh
So God's name, at least the one given to Moses in the above Torah passage, is "Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh." What does that mean? In biblical Hebrew, "Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh" is a deceptively simple phrase consisting of the relative pronoun "asher" sandwiched between two instances of the first person singular imperfect of the verb hayah--to be. "Ehyeh" is most commonly translated as "I will be." Asher is a remarkable Hebrew word. Imagine, in English, a single word that can mean "that" "who" "which" or "where." So the phrase could mean:
I will be that I will be; I will be who I will be; I will be which I will be; I will be where I will be.
http://www.bluethread.com/ehyeh.htm

I remember Prophet's professor Alexander A. Di Lella, O.F.M. in 1968 translating the words Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh as "I shall be there, as who I am, shall I be there."

We'll never know who will show up, in what disguise, what they'll say, how they'll say it, nor how we'll receive it. But, says our no-name God, such a presence will always be there between you and me. That's where God is -- between us. We've got to step out from the covers, out from behind the veil, out from our hiding place -- to the open-between -- and face the truth, to face our truth.

Annie Dillard wrote in "Teaching a Stone to Talk" (1982): Quit your tents. Pray without ceasing.

It occurs to me there's a toll for attention. We have to 'pay' attention our presence before attention opens up for us what is right there in front of us. What is within us must come out of its tent to be part of what is between us. This means the (so-called) other person must also step out. When both appear, they appear in the dwelling place of God. 'Heaven' is between us. (Greek:mesos= between). Once we step out of our hiding place, we enter the realm of prayer. Unceasingly we find ourselves praying, asking 'What am I doing here?" or 'What the hell is going on?' or, 'Who am I?' or, 'Help me, Lord, please?'

To pray is to be aware of what is taking place, looking at it, questioning it, and (if we have the courage) engaging it as best we can. To surrender in prayer to the overwhelming reality placed before and between us means we let go of our (erroneous) belief we can do it by ourselves, handle it, manipulate it. Most times we can't. Not alone. And so we (slowly) come round to ask God and one another to bring us along the way of annunciation and renunciation. Annunciation, meaning, the revelation of presence. Renunciation, meaning, the letting go of that which is false or impedes the realization of true presence. This we must do unceasingly.

My heart is ready, God. My heart is ready. I will offer you music and song.
Awake, my glory, awake, lyre and harp. I will awaken the dawn.
I will proclaim you among the peoples, Lord, and make music for you among the nations,
for your mercy reaches as high as the heavens, your faithfulness to the clouds. (- from Psalm 57)

So, it is Thanksgiving Day, 2006. Presence longs to be revealed. Falseness wants to disappear. Each one of us longs to be here with one another -- whether in solitude or in community. On a profound level, to be alone is to be with everyone, to be together is to experience the mystery of suchness and distinctive singularity where each one is each one, alone-with-others.

It is Not Enough

It is not enough to know.
It is not enough to follow
the inward road conversing in secret.

It is not enough to see straight ahead,
to gaze at the unborn
thinking the silence belongs to you.

It is not enough to hear
even the tiniest edge of rain.

You must go to the place
where everything waits,
there, when you finally rest,
even one word will do,
one word or the palm of your hand
turning outward
in the gesture of gift.

And now we are truly afraid
to find the great silence
asking so little.

One word, one word only.
(-Poem: "It is Not Enough," from Where Many Rivers Meet by David Whyte.)

Gratitude.

We practice a spirituality of everyday uncovering.

There are no precepts to follow,
No practices to engage in.
From the outset
There are no passions;
From the beginning we are
Enlightened.
We eat when we are hungry,
Rest when we are tired.
- Nonin (d.1196)

I wish the words 'gratitude' and 'open' a nearer dwelling with you.

"Now what happens?" Richard asked ending his contribution to the final circle. We were speaking of truth, of not knowing, and Zen Gifts to Christians (book by Jesuit Robert Kennedy)..

On the day of his enlightenment, in front of the lecture hall, Tokusan burned to ashes his commentaries on the sutras. He said: “However abstruse the teachings are, in comparison with this enlightenment they are like a single hair to the great sky. However profound the complicated knowledge of the world, compared to this enlightenment it is like one drop of water to the great ocean.” Then he left the monastery.
- The Gateless Gate

The sky tonight is clear and vast. It is cold. Ground tightens.

"Among so many great events, there is one phenomenon which, in the eyes of posterity, may well overshadow everything that has been discovered in radiation and electricity: the permanent entry into operation, in our day, of inter-human affinities - the movement, irresistible and ever increasing in speed, which we can see for ourselves, welding peoples and individuals to another..."
(--Indian Ocean, March 1929, "The Sense of Man", in Toward the Future, Teilhard de Chardin)

Perhaps truth combines inter-human with inter-sentient and inter-spiritual affinity.

You never, really, know.

Gandhi went from holding that God is truth to a new understanding. He began to hold that Truth is God.

There's no knowing truth. There is, however, seeing, feeling, and experiencing truth. Truth is being revealed as what is now taking place.

We need to be poised right here with the question: Now what happens?

Taking place here.

"The day will come when, after harnessing space,
the winds, the tides, gravitation, we shall harness
for God the energies of love. And, on that day,
for the second time in the history of the world,
man will have discovered fire."
(--Peking, February 1934, Teilhard, "The Evolution of Chastity", in Toward the Future, London: Collins, 1975: 86-87.)

Burning away. Falling away. Into empty open presence.

Comes.

Now.

God.

Truth.

What are we waiting for?

Why do I talk here?
Only because you
Followers of the Tao
Go galloping around in
Search of the mind,
And are unable to stop it.
On the other hand,
The ancients acted in a leisurely
Way, appropriate to
Circumstances as they arose.
- Lin-chi (d.867)

Some wait for the Second Coming. Some for the coming of season's first snow. But some wait for nothing. These I find in a sympathetic monastery of mindful silence and stillness.

Through justification and the spiritual resurrection, grace now effects in them an initial change that is God’s gift. Later on, through the bodily resurrection, the transformation of the just will be brought to completion, and they will experience a perfect, abiding, unchangeable glorification. The purpose of this change wrought in them by the gifts of both justification and glorification is that they may abide in an eternal, changeless state of joy.
Here on earth they are changed by the first resurrection, in which they are enlightened and converted, thus passing from death to life, sinfulness to holiness, unbelief to faith, and evil actions to holy life. For this reason the second death has no power over them. It is of such men that the Book of Revelation says: "Happy the man who shares in the first resurrection; over such as he the second death has no power." Elsewhere the same book says: "He who overcomes shall not be harmed by the second death." As the first resurrection consists of the conversion of the heart, the second death consists of unending torment.
(from The treatise of St Fulgentius of Ruspe on the forgiveness, Office of Readings, Monday of week 33 of the year)

I suspect the torment need not be the incendiary good fire torture the preacher told the men about the other day, but more a torment of realizing regret. This regret will arise in a mind slowly coming aware of the kindness and sweetness of so many in our lives, generosity displayed us that we failed to recognize at the time, failed to respond to, and failed to relate to as worthwhile endeavor of human action.

This realization begins to fall upon our fledgling awakening all of a gradual seeing tinged with soft sorrow that so much authentic compassion and wisdom went by without appreciation or caring engagement.

Interlude

We are waiting for snow
the way we might wait for a train
to arrive with its cold cargo—
it is late already, but surely
it will come.

We are waiting for snow
the way we might wait
for permission
to breathe again.

For only the snow
will release us, only the snow
will be a letting go, a blind falling
towards the body of earth
and towards each other.

And while we wait at this window
whose sheer transparency
is clouded already
with our mutual breath,

it is as if our whole lives depended
on the freezing color
of the sky, on the white
soon to be fractured
gaze of winter.
(Poem: "Interlude" by Linda Pastan, from Queen of a Rainy Country. W. W. Norton & Company.)

If we open our eyes now, will we see one another's efforts to make manifest the inner longing to be kind, be true, be present? Will hearts show through the never ending invitation of holy reality urging spirit to permeate our forgetful and unforgiving inconsiderations? If our eyes began to see, would the vision of sacred Christ-life (enlightened Buddha-mind, resplendent Tao-nature) slowly turn us to one another in such a way as to free us from separative fear?

Second death, I suspect, would be our final unwillingness and inability to care for one another -- and thereby, not see with the beatific vision of the One we call God. Resurrection, I suspect, would be our coming to see with the beatific vision what is being seen with the gaze of God.

Seeing what falls is to see what is rising in our hearts.

So it is -- separation calls for union, sin calls for redemption, unloving calls for loving.

It is a kind and sweet call.

If we listen, we can hear it.

It asks us: Now? It urges us: Now! It comforts us: now.

What are we waiting for?

This is worth experiencing

I'm saying this to myself: the sacred cannot be found unless you give up some old version of it. And when you do, mon semblable, mon frere, I swear there'll be an emptiness it'll take a lifetime to fill.
(-Stephen Dunn, footnote in Zen Gifts to Christians by Robert Kennedy, from Riffs and Reciprocities, cited in American Poetry Review 27, March/April 1998)

Or not to fill. No need collecting versions.

Let the sacred fall through each vision.

See it now.

After rain for days, this morning, sun.

Inscription tombstone of Hui-neng
According to his doctrine,
Non-doing is reality,
Emptiness is the truth,
And the ultimate meaning
Of things is vast and
Immovable.
He taught that human nature
In its beginning
As well as in the end
Is thoroughly good
For it has its root
In that which is serene.
- Liu Tsung-yuan

It is hard to imagine what the "fall" means to those that believe in sinful nature of man. Passing a Baptist church in Waterville, it is thought-provoking to read sign "Jesus Christ died for your sins." I wonder what they mean.

May God, who helps us when we refuse to give up, help you all to be tolerant with each other, following the example of Christ Jesus, so that united in mind and voice you may give glory to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. It can only be to God’s glory, then, for you to treat each other in the same friendly way as Christ treated you.
-Romans 15:5 - 7

As a Christian, as a Muslim, as a Jew, as a Buddhist, as a Hindu, as a Pagan, as an Atheist, as an Agnostic, as a Quaker, as an insignificant ordinary man -- I am vitally curious as to what it means to be completely human in this existence.

I challenge everyone to curiosity.

Unless you have a mustard seed of curiosity, you will not grow into the gift that needs to be given to all sentient beings, to the sacred itself.

After the sun, dusk, darkness, stars and comets -- a cold night and profound gratitude for being alive -- stairs, and bed.

There are many of us in prison.

Some have committed crimes. Some are simply locked in thought patterns. Criminals know the loss of freedom that haunts the space between walls and razor wire. Others are confined by fear and the need to control what is taking place, usually before it takes place.

Either we participate in the revelation of the open between us (i.e., what is called God), or we dam the emerging revelation with constricting repression.

Who says my poems are poems?
These poems are not poems.
When you can understand this,
then we can begin to speak of poetry.
-poem by Taigu Ryokan (1758-1831) (nicknamed Great Fool)

We spoke today about transference -- how our vibrations and intentions influence and shape the room and the individuals therein. We spoke about Masaru Emoto's work with water, how love-and-thanks awareness beautifully shapes what it touches.

We are in great need of acceptance and gratitude. The very water of our being longs for such appreciation.

Deep white clouds
Blanket the ragged roof
Grateful for this
Old Zen friend’s visit
I send him off at the gate
Both of us silent
Standing under the
Shade of the tall pine
Lingering.
- Jakushitsu (1290 – 1367)

If we practice sitting with one another -- in silence replete with loving attention -- we participate in shaping the person, environment, and world wherewith and wherein we dwell.

God, (however we understand God,) is the sacred energy resonating through our midst, sounding between us, allowing our paths to take route, our being to take root. True life finds shape between us, freeing us from self-imposed prison.

Freedom is finding a way through the presence of God between us. If we stay locked within our idea of freedom, we hold self hostage to old notions and prior patterns of self-induced belief.

Self is troublesome separation.

No-self is open door.

Walk through.

Let God.

Transpire.

Unguarded is what aware means.

It is important to understand
that buddha nature is not
something we imagine or
create from nothing.
It is something that exists
already, and the gradual method
the Buddha taught is designed
to awaken the ever-present
buddha nature by instructing
individuals at different
levels of development
exactly how to do this.
- The Twelfth Tai Situpa

To be aware as what is revealing itself is revealing itself.

Thus it is that my heart rejoices, heart and soul together; while my body rests in calm hope. (-from Psalm 16)

The fact; not the idea about the fact, not the opinion about the fact.

The fact -- unguarded awareness.

Is doing this.

Time is going.

I don't believe that any human mind is capable of 100 percent error. So instead of asking which approach is right and which is wrong, we assume each approach is true but partial, and then try to figure out how to fit these partial truths together, how to integrate them--not how to pick one and get rid of the others.
-Ken Wilber (from the foreword to The Eye of Spirit)

Space is expanding

When the Mexicans in their deficient mythical-magic structure encountered the mentally-oriented Spaniards, the magic-mythical power failed in the face of mental strength; clan consciousness failed in the face of the individualized ego-consciousness. If an integral man were to encounter a deficient mental man, would not deficient material power fail in the face of integral strength? Would not the individual ego-consciousness falter in the face of the Itself-consciousness of mankind? the mental-rational in the face of the spiritual? fragmentation in the face of integrality?
(from Vorlesungen und Reden zu „Ursprung und Gegenwart“, THE INVISIBLE ORIGIN, Evolution as a Supplementary Process, By Jean Gebser)

Wholeness is unveiling.

Many Arabs, as I've written before, would like some of our democracy, but they would also like another kind of freedom -- freedom from us.
But you get the point. We are preparing our get-out excuses. The Iraqis don't deserve us. Screw them. That's the grit we're laying down on the desert floor to help our tanks out of Iraq.
(from "U.S. Tanks Will Roll out of Iraq on a Road Paved with Excuses", by Robert Fisk, who writes from the Middle East for The Independent of Britain.)

November is half done.

Nocturne vigil.

Tunturi wheel draped with gray sock. No one cycles nowhere. Rain drips from roof. Fog wanders back roads from St. Albans and Pittsfield. Thich Nhat Hanh took communion with Dan Berrigan in first chapter of Living Buddha, Living Christ.

Life, he said, is what we celebrate.

Mind, mind, mind—
Above the Path.
Here on my mountain,
Gray hair down,
I cherish bamboo sprouts,
Brush carefully
By pine twigs.
Burning incense,
I open a book:
Mist over flagstones.
Rolling the blind,
I contemplate:
Moon in the pond.
Of my old friends,
How many know the Way?
- Zengetsu (833 – 912)

Life is the Way. Only life.

Erika read Tibetan Folk Tales as I read Thay in parking lot of social service program where Saskia audited worker's comp as dusk came over field across from lumber mill where light on end of building went on/off with staccato regularity.

A simple sitting side by side in mist and silence. A mobile monastery.

Little Prayer in November

That I am alive, I thank
no one in particular;
and yet am thankful, mostly,
although I frame no prayer

but this one: Creator
Spirit, as you have come,
come again, even in November,
on these short days, fogbound.
(Poem: "Little Prayer in November" by Lee Rudolph, from A Woman and a Man, Ice-Fishing. Texas Review Press. )

When Thich Nhat Hanh was told by a minister Thay could not be grateful because Thay did not believe in God, Thay was surprised. It is always surprising when someone tells us we are not what we are.

A compassionate response would be to thank our judges for reminding us how much more we have to pray, meditate, and investigate who we are. When our critics see something in us they are not, we have to deepen our humility so that we might realize what they become in our gratitude for them.

Existence is a complex task. Every day we have to look at and listen to what is revealing itself in our midst. Everything is shaping us. To realize this is to participate with what is being shaped

Oh, come to the water all you who are thirsty; though you have no money, come! Buy corn without money, and eat, and, at no cost, wine and milk.
--Isaiah 55:1

Our absurdity is failing to extend the invitation wider. That same absurdity fails to recognize sacred gifts as they present themselves before us.

Show us, Sacred One, your loving face in each comforter and critic!

In November's rain we humbly listen to your splashing presence.

One's gift of gratitude.

Only life.

The air we breathe is, I submit, love. Clear love is more habitable than unclear love. We do long for clear sight, clear experience. We don't always get it.

The Hollies, in 1974, released a song "The Air That I Breathe." The refrain goes:
Sometimes, all I need is the air that I breathe
And to love you
All I need is the air that I breathe
Yes to love you
All I need is the air that I breathe

If you breathe out and speak a word, you have concealed as much as you have revealed. If you breathe in and receive a sound, you have revealed what is being concealed. This prospect silences me.

When I contemplate the Word, the expression of Christ Reality in our language, I encounter the concealed presence of what seems absent. Christ is the air that is breathed.

Trinitarians wish to divvy up Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Unitarians say the Godhead is the Father alone. Buddhists cut the difference saying not one/not two (and we suppose) not three. These days it seems that what is called 'Christ' might be the resolution of this planet -- a suffusing transparency, vital atmosphere, clear light.

Love is as revealed as concealed. We have much to learn.

Don’t do anything
Whatsoever with the mind—
Abide in an authentic,
Natural state.
One’s own mind,
Unwavering, is reality.
The key is to meditate
Like this without wavering.
Experience the great reality
Beyond extremes.
- The Nun Niguna

The reality of Christ is as in as out as breath is. The prospect of embodiment makes incarnation a mystery of revelation and concealment. Breath means life. The body breathes us. Christ enters creation with each breath. If we realized this once.

And he does not have to offer himself again and again, like the high priest going into the sanctuary year after year with the blood that is not his own, or else he would have had to suffer over and over again since the world began. Instead of that, he has made his appearance once and for all, now at the end of the last age, to do away with sin by sacrificing himself.
--Hebrews 9:24 - 26

Once. And. For all.

Annunciation

‘Hail, space for the uncontained God’
From the Agathistos Hymn, Greece, VIc

We know the scene: the room, variously furnished,
almost always a lectern, a book; always
the tall lily.
Arrived on solemn grandeur of great wings,
the angelic ambassador, standing or hovering,
whom she acknowledges, a guest.

But we are told of meek obedience. No one mentions
courage.
The engendering Spirit
did not enter her without consent.
God waited.

She was free
to accept or to refuse, choice
integral to humanness.

____________________________

Aren’t there annunciations
of one sort or another
in most lives?
Some unwillingly
undertake great destinies,
enact them in sullen pride,
uncomprehending.
More often
those moments
when roads of light and storm
open from darkness in a man or woman,
are turned away from
in dread, in a wave of weakness, in despair
and with relief.
Ordinary lives continue.
God does not smite them.
But the gates close, the pathway vanishes.

______________________________

She had been a child who played, ate, slept
like any other child – but unlike others,
wept only for pity, laughed
in joy not triumph.
Compassion and intelligence
fused in her, indivisible.

Called to a destiny more momentous
than any in all of Time,
she did not quail,
only asked
a simple, 'How can this be?'
and gravely, courteously,
took to heart the angel’s reply,
perceiving instantly
the astounding ministry she was offered:

to bear in her womb
Infinite weight and lightness; to carry
in hidden, finite inwardness,
nine months of Eternity; to contain
in slender vase of being,
the sum of power –
in narrow flesh,
the sum of light.
Then bring to birth,
push out into air, a Man-child
needing, like any other,
milk and love –

but who was God.

This was the minute no one speaks of,
when she could still refuse.

A breath unbreathed,
Spirit,
suspended,
waiting.
____________________________

She did not cry, "I cannot, I am not worthy,"
nor "I have not the strength."
She did not submit with gritted teeth,
raging, coerced.
Bravest of all humans,
consent illumined her.
The room filled with its light,
the lily glowed in it,
and the iridescent wings.
Consent,
courage unparalleled,
opened her utterly.
(Poem: Annunciation, by Denise Levertov)

What is it like to be opened, utterly?

Until that time, we practice openness between us. This 'open between' is the space where dwells what is called Christ.

"What is" called "Christ" is the interconnection of each with every each held in compassionate kindness.

If God is Love, then Christ is the inclusive activity of seeing and being seen through. Holy Spirit (for now) is enlivening trust in what is revealed as well as what is concealed.

Faith tumbles through love, trusting it to be there, known or unknown, knowing or unknowing.

Seeing is believing; a more profound faith needs see nothing.

A wonderful painting is the result of feeling in your fingers. If you have the feeling of the thickness of the ink in your brush, the painting is already there before you paint. When you dip your brush into the ink you already know the result of your drawing, or else you cannot paint. So before you do something, being is there, the result is there. Even though you look as if you were sitting quietly, all your activity, past and present, is included; and the result of your sitting is also already there. You are not resting at all. All the activity is included within you. That is your being. So all results of your practice are included in your sitting. This is our practice, our zazen.
(-Shunryu Suzuki, Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, from Everyday Mind, edited by Jean Smith)

All the activity is included within you.

Breathing in; breathing out. Looking out; looking in.

Who is doing this? What is being seen through?

Compassion and intelligence, fused, indivisible.

What Is Itself, Christed, Spirited!

Integral to humanness.

Eleven, eleven, eleven, eleven. All ones.

We need, again, armistice -- that is, a cessation of arms for a short time, by convention; a temporary suspension of hostilities by agreement; a truce.

He said to them, ‘You are the very ones who pass yourselves off as virtuous in people’s sight, but God knows your hearts. For what is thought highly of by men is loathsome in the sight of God."
--Luke 15:16

War is thought of highly by men.

War is loathsome.

We will cease hostilities when we look through the transparent and present Christ. Without that mind seeing through Christ, we not only do not see one another, we only see enemies and objects through afflicted emotions.

Until I see you as you are, I never see Christ. When I see you as you are, I am looking through the invisible Christ -- my sight corrected -- and see no enemy, no object, only you, and you as loving friend.

We need to become veterans of tiresome wars fought by ignorance that tries to own what is not possible to own.

1...1. 1...1. 1...1. 1...1.

Nobody owns one.

One is everybody.

Seen through.

Christ.

A hermit writes

Dear Saskia and Bill,
I've been living as a hermit (mostly Catholic .. mostly) in Minnesota and now find myself searching for community.
I love your way of saying - monastics of no other !! That's me as well ! I have been chided for being 'between' , when it truly can be a bridge, right ?
Do you have plans for actual community ?
Blessings !
K

And we respond:

Hello K,

A bridge, yes.
I agree -- we are often, as you say, chided, that is -- someone finds fault with -- the spiritual and corporal practice of bridging between.
Perhaps we have to learn how to lightly travel and traverse what is between us -- not ignoring it, not trying to shape it into our image, nor attempting to insist that the seeming distance of the 'between' is only an illusion.

What-is between-us just might be the kingdom of heaven, one of the dwelling places of God. The mystery of our spirituality longing to engage and embody the presence of God in this existence reminds us we can neither ignore, control, imagine, nor treat as illusion the sacred between.

Which leaves us the odd choice of either giving ourselves to what is between us, or withholding ourselves from what is between us.

May that choice be undertaken with and for the love of God!

And yet, perhaps there is no bridge, and no bridging between. the effort to bridge between might be our absurd effort to put something there which is not needed. Maybe we are asked to step off our edge of thought and belief ...and fall. We always seem to want a secure step. Maybe faith is a tumbling through God. In that tumbling, in our prayer during that tumbling, might appear the ungraspable strands of trust and surrender that construct a new form of interconnection that we once might have named 'bridge,' only now it is named 'the open between.'

K, thank you for your note. Our plans for actual community fall into 'the open between.'
We're beginning to think that the coming and going, the touching base and moving off, the appearance of strangers and familiarity of local regulars -- that this is our actual community. As often as we draw plans for land, buildings, schedule (or non-schedule), concerted and intentional community -- we are tossed back to weather and whether. The weather changes. We're uncertain whether our calling will become an "actual" gathered semi-traditional community.

But we pray. And converse. Look at farms and town buildings. Visit the Maritimes. Bother our dear friends with our thoughts and what-ifs, and go on day to day. Hopefully. In the no-name loving presence of the open between.

Keep in touch.

And blessings to you, your calling, and your practice

Bill (and Saskia)

Where do you look?

Over the ages
You have followed objects,
Never once turning back
To look within.
Time slips away;
Months and years
Are wasted
- Kuei-shan Ling-yu (771-854)

Looking within, a whole landscape is revealed.

Didn’t you realise that you were God’s temple and that the Spirit of God was living among you? If anybody should destroy the temple of God, God will destroy him, because the temple of God is sacred; and you are that temple.
(from 1 Corinthians 3)

You must remember your name.

It is a sacred place.

Peculiar.

Madness, the way they
Gallop off to foreign shores!
Turning to the One Mind,
I find my Buddhahood,
Above self and others,
Beyond coming and going.
This will remain
When all else is gone.
- Tanzan (1819 –1892)

Voting might still work.

You will lead me out of the trap that they laid for me – for you are my strength.\(--from Psalm 31)

Odd.

This changes.

It's time to vote.

Men and women are not the easiest reliance. Some say: Give me God! But God says: I have become human; look for me there. So, here we are, looking at one another, wondering what God was thinking when God became human. Because, men and women are not the easiest reliance.

Enlightenment is like the moon reflected on the water.
The moon does not get wet, nor is the water broken.
Although its light is wide and great,
The moon is reflected even in a puddle an inch wide.
The whole moon and the entire sky
Are reflected in one dewdrop on the grass.
Dogen

Are dewdrops easier? Is clear reflection of what is there something comforting?

(I would prefer if all references to good/evil, right/wrong, truth/lie were to disappear. In their place I would prefer clear/unclear. If clarity is what we desire, then obscureness and incomprehensibility is not desirable.)

"Mother died today. Or maybe yesterday, I don't know. I had a telegram from the home: 'Mother passed away. Funeral tomorrow. Yours sincerely.' That doesn't mean anything. It may have happened yesterday." (from The Stranger, by Albert Camus)

What metaphorical mother is worded in that telegram? What has died?

Words seldom carry clarity, less frequently meaning. Words, to be of use to us, are best clear openings through which sight passes freely. In our world of political speech and consumer seduction, words elicit fantasy images rather than clear sight.

Something clearer is called for. A mind that sees and shows a clearer reality is longed for.

In your minds you must be the same as Christ Jesus:
His state was divine,
yet he did not cling
to his equality with God
but emptied himself
to assume the condition of a slave,
and became as men are;
and being as all men are,
he was humbler yet,
even to accepting death,
death on a cross.
But God raised him high
and gave him the name
which is above all other names
so that all beings in the heavens,
on earth and in the underworld,
should bend the knee at the name of Jesus
and that every tongue should acclaim
Jesus Christ as Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.
Philippians 2:5 - 11

What is Jesus' name?

His name is clear sight. His name is concrete act. His name is encouraging heart.

In order not to fall into despair and ultimate disharmony we must find out one thing.

The most important thing is to find out
what is the most important thing.
Shunryu Suzuki

There are so many unimportant diversions and erroneous opinions. (Flaws I fall to.)

I consider empty mind and clear sight worth attention. I like Jesus' name.

The mindful exert themselves. To no abode are they attached. Like swans that quit their pools, home after home they abandon (and go).
(--verse 91 in The Dhammapada, sayings of the Buddha)

I like Buddha's swans. Going and going.

I am not fond of glum and angry opinions asserting that God is in the pockets of a few glum and angry men and women sporting eerie smiles and claiming exclusive proprietary faith and judging rights over those not signatories of glum and angry formulas of fundamental belief.

Some of these claimants are politicians who claim to own God. Some are preachers who own these politicians. These are difficult times.

Let's abandon these opinions. Let's turn from these diversions.

Let's be humbler yet.

Let's look at the whole moon and the entire sky.

Let's be human as God is human.

Does your vote fit here?

I visit Christ in Rockland Monday morning.

A piece of white roundness is shown me by a man in white alb. I say I will, yes, receive this round host. I do. I walk to rear pew. I kneel. After a short while everybody leaves. Lights go out. I am alone.

If you have developed great
Capacity and cutting insight,
You can undertake Zen
Right where you are.
Without getting it from another,
You understand clearly
On your own.
- Yuanwu

Is this a meeting with Christ? All alone in empty church with no one visible?

Jesus said to his host, ‘When you give a lunch or a dinner, do not ask your friends, brothers, relations or rich neighbours, for fear they repay your courtesy by inviting you in return. No; when you have a party, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind; that they cannot pay you back means that you are fortunate, because repayment will be made to you when the virtuous rise again.’
--Luke 14:12 - 14

Catholics are a curious lot. Fundamentalists consider them not to be Christians. In the silence and dim light of rainy morning I am pleased to be alone with my brothers and sisters -- the crippled, lame, blind. We sit in the silence and emptiness with Christ.

This Christ does not tell us we are true believers. He keeps to himself. This Christ is not a cock-sure braggert who struts his arrogance and superiority. He worries about life and existence. This Christ is not the self-proclaimed savior of the whole world, the Father's sacrifice, the blood-washing king of the righteous. He is a nobody, broken, a man at prayer, in the solitude of sacred gratitude.

Apple Season in a Time of War

The children are terrible
in their innocence,
and the frightened parents
can neither scold nor protect them

as the leaves continue to fall
like tiny portents
from the ancestral trees.
Weather is all

that remains unchanged,
with its accidental
almost merciful cruelties,
its winds, its falling temperatures.

But I can hear the children
whose laughter rings
like small but dangerous
hammers on an anvil.

I can hear the buzz of radio voices,
persistent as insects
on all the frequencies
of madness.
Poem: "Apple Season in a Time of War" by Linda Pastan, from Queen of a Rainy Country. W.W. Norton & Company.

Tomorrow the United States will vote for their local leaders. The president and vice president will remain. It is an important election. Some say our troubled national soul is at stake.

When I leave the church, Christ has dissolved into the emptiness, my body bows in the direction of crucifix and tabernacle. The figure of an executed man hangs in stillness; the glint of gold enclosure shields vision of entombed repository depths of mysterious faith under sanctuary candle.

I am certain of nothing. That's why it is called faith.

I am wary of certitude. The doubtless are most often arrogant.

My visit is to the question.

Who are you? Who am I? What is this? How will it end? What does your face really look like?

My fundamentalist brothers and sisters are not troubled by these questions. They know the answers. Ask them.

Not me.

I leave church for Willow Bake Shoppe chocolate donuts and Green Mountain dark roast coffee cut by hazelnut cream. I greet Rainy in quick mart parking lot. She smiles with recognition. We drive off in separate directions -- we have seen one another, we go on with our morning.

It's like that with Christ.

Hello.

And good.

Bye.

Saddam Hussein is found guilty by American backed court, and sentenced to hang.

This news cheers many. It worries me.

Will an American court find the American administration officials who've overseen (and overlooked) illegal invasion, torture, and murder in Iraq guilty of crimes against humanity? Will an awakened moral consciousness and restored judicial conscience face the distinct possibility that unconscionable acts have been committed by an arrogant administration and must be accounted for?

Ordinarily, we spend all our time comparing and discriminating between this and that, always looking around for something good to happen to us. And because of that we become restless and anxious about everything. As long as we are able to imagine something better than what we have or who we are, it follows naturally that there could also be something worse. We are constantly pursued by misgivings that something bad will happen. In other words, as long as we live by distinguishing between the better way and the worse way, we can never find absolute peace such that whatever happens is all right. When we let go of our thoughts that distinguish better from worse and instead see everything in terms of the Universal Self, we are able to settle upon a different attitude toward life--the attitude of magnanimous mind that whatever happens, we are living out Self which is only Self. Here a truly peaceful life unfolds.
--Kosho Uchiyama, Opening the Hand of Thought from Everyday Mind, edited by Jean Smith

If we recognized a Universal Self, would we have to recognize a core reality that is distinct and distinguished? Christ Reality? Buddha Mind? Unspeakable Tao? Nameless YHVH? Great Allah? No Other? Impassable Brahman? Truth Itself? Love One? What Is Alone?

The scribe said to him, ‘Well spoken, Master; what you have said is true: that he is one and there is no other. To love him with all your heart, with all your understanding and strength, and to love your neighbour as yourself, this is far more important than any holocaust or sacrifice.’ Jesus, seeing how wisely he had spoken, said, ‘You are not far from the kingdom of God’. And after that no one dared to question him any more.
Mark 12: 33-34

We are not far!

There's a new designation for all of us.

We are: "Not Far!"

We pray for Saddam Hussein. We pray for the Iraqi people.

We pray for George Bush. We pray for the American people.

We are not far from either of them.

This realization invites, (no, demands) compassion.

And stark, unsentimental, transparent, courage.

To be, and do, what is necessary and true.

The world longs for a rare integrity.

Dare we ask: Are we ready?

No longer arrogant.

But questioning.

Try to stay alive one more day.

If the eye never falls asleep,
All dreams cease by themselves.
If the spirit retains its unity,
All things are of one essence.
When this essence is seen,
In an instant we are free.
We return to the origin
And remain that which we are.
- T’sen T’sang

You've got to imagine she is thinking: Oh shit!

At once, she fell down at his feet and breathed her last. When the young men entered they found her dead, so they carried her out and buried her beside her husband.
Acts 5:10

Sapphira took a moment to think.

What to say?

In an instant she could be free.

Truth is just like this.

Your friend is the one who calls you into question.

Once there, you must question what is presented to you. Don't be shy. Don't be indignant. Nor insulted. Your friend is the unexpected one who does not allow any set self-opinion to stand uncontested. Instead, he calls you into question. You cannot be arrogant. You must ask the question. Then you must respond to it.

The universal body of reality
Is so subtle that
You do not hear it
When you deliberately
Listen for it,
And you do not see it
When you look at it.
As for the pure knowledge
That has no teacher,
How can it be attained by
Thought or study?
- Huanglong

There are no teachers. Only learners. Everyone standing in the midst of others is always and only demonstrating herself or himself. This one is revealing himself to another. Herself to another. No teaching; only learning.

Then he said to them, ‘Which of you here, if his son falls into a well, or his ox, will not pull him out on a sabbath day without hesitation?’ And to this they could find no answer.
--Luke 14: 5-6

Forget the rules. Know them, but forget them. Just do what is asking to be done in every moment.

There is no answer. There is, instead, moment to moment response to the mystery we find ourselves living each day. There is no end to it. Mystery, genuine mystery, is not solved -- it is lived.

No final word. No closing statement after which nothing more to be said.

There is always something wanting to be said. It looks to us to find it and to say it. In the same way, scripture (being alive) wants to be lived through our bodies -- not quoted and filed by our minds.

Go to church if it helps you. Grow tomatoes to put store-
bought in perspective. Listen to Elvis and Bach. Unless
you're tone deaf, own Perlman's "Meditation from Thais."
Don't look for hidden meanings in a cardinal's song.
Don't think TV characters talk to you; that's crazy.

Don't be too sane. Work hard. Loaf easily. Have good
friends, and be good to them. Be immoderate
in moderation. Spend little time anesthetized. Dive
the Great Barrier Reef. Don't touch the coral. Watch
for sea snakes. Smile for the camera. Don't say "Cheese."
(from poem "How to Live" by Charles Harper Webb, from Amplified Dog.)

The epigraph to that poem is by Sharon Olds, and reads: "I don't know how to live."

Don't know.

Just live.

It's all there.

Hear the question.

Hear friends.

Let God live through you.

Evening chill damp fog will turn to slippery surfaces as temperature falls.

Day of the dead when "pan de muerto," or bread of the dead, is eaten.

Many times the mountains have
Turned from green to yellow
So much for the capricious earth!
Dust in your eyes,
The triple world is narrow;
Nothing on your mind,
Your chair is wide enough.
- Muso (1275 – 1351)

The wide chair looks out on November emptiness. Bare limbs a sudden novelty.

Thursday Evening Conversation is currently Course in Miracles. Jack leads. New metaphors, new views.

On this mountain he will remove
the mourning veil covering all peoples,
and the shroud enwrapping all nations,
he will destroy Death for ever.
--Isaiah 25: 7

So many are so enthralled with killing and death. They are pleased Jesus was killed for them. The look forward to Jesus killing those not saved. Wars in Afghanistan, and Iraq, soon maybe in Iran, then maybe other Middle Eastern wars with Israel, Palestine, Pakistan, India, Lebanon, Syria. Then to Asia. Then to Eastern Europe. The religious zealots take curious joy in, for them, the prelude to apocalypse. We are an odd people.

Anger

I killed the bee for no reason except that it was there and you were
watching, disapproving,
which made what I would do much worse but I was angry with
you anyway and so I put my foot on it,
leaned on it, tested how much I'd need to make that resilient,
resisting cartridge give way
and crack! abruptly, shockingly it did give way and you turned
sharply and sharply now
I felt myself balanced in your eyes—why should I feel myself so
balanced always in your eyes;
isn't just this half the reason for my rage, these tendencies of
yours, susceptibilities of mine?—
and "Why?" your eyes said, "Why?" and even as mine sent back my
answer, "None of your affair,"
I knew that I was being once again, twice now, weighed, and this
time anyway found wanting.
(Poem: "Anger" by C.K. Williams, from Love About Love. Ausable Press.)

We celebrate the fact of each dead being today. Like the mouse running from my cleaning in the cabin into the cat's mouth. The unnecessary necessity of it.

Saskia said she cried at mass this morning. For Sylvia. For Verena.

At dawn this morning, sitting in meditation cabin, the Christ who will have no part of killing remained in silent presence throughout the sweet light coming over Sally's land.

I know. I was there. Clearly watching.

The joy of it.

All.
Saints.
Souls.

Presence God.

Few people believe their
Inherent mind is Buddha.
Most will not take this seriously,
And therefore are cramped.
They are wrapped up in
Illusions, cravings,
Resentments,
And other afflictions,
All because they love
The cave of ignorance.
- Fenyang

In this presence, no separation, no isolated self.

Be angry if you must, but do not sin: do not let your anger outlast the sunset: do not give the Devil his chance.
--Ephesians 4:26-27

Sin seeks other. Give it no chance. Chance makes possible other.

The one we call God is no other.

One another.

Souls.
Saints.
All.

It is Hallow'een -- The eve of All Saints.

Truth is being revealed as what is now taking place.

Clipping cedar branches that hang too close to roof. Standing on peak ridge pole looking out over kitchen, barn, cabin, black and white cat and dog. The afternoon is silent. Clip, saw, snap, toss to ground, climb down ladder.

Wind bells are hung on sawn branch outside small window closest to road.

Forty-some years I’ve
Lived in the mountains,
Ignorant of the world’s
Rise and fall.
Warmed at night by a stove
Full of pine needles;
Satisfied at noon by a bowl
Of wild plants;
Sitting on rocks
Watching clouds and empty thoughts;
Patching my robe in sunlight;
Practicing silence
Till someone asks
Why Bodhidharma came east,
And I hang out my wash.
- Shih-wu (1252-1352)

Earlier I ask Saskia walking snow bowl how she is praying these days. She settles on presence. Prayer of presence. That, and gratitude. Thanking everything for their presence.

Joe will be 88 just after new year. He can't walk much these days. I sit with him on way back from dentist. We conclude everything is too expensive. But he's happy. Newspapers on table. He still likes a beer at night. He's in bed by 8pm. I offer to put storm window in back door. He'll tell his wife I was going to do it. That will spur her, he says.

He's glad he grew up Irish catholic.

When the Buddha was asked how the world started, he kept silent. In the religion of Buddhism we don’t have a first cause, instead we have a never ending circle of birth and death. In this world and in all worlds, there are many beginnings and ends. The model of life used in Buddhism has no starting place... It just keeps going and going.

Now having said that... If you’re a Buddhist it’s OK to believe God was the first cause... It really doesn't go against the teachings of the Buddha, his focus was on suffering... It's also OK to believe science has the answer… Like the big bang theory, etc... Some Buddhist’s don’t even care how it all started, and that’s fine too. Knowing how the world started is not going to end your suffering, it’s just going to give you more stuff to think about.

I hope you can see that God is not what Buddhism is about... Suffering is... And if you want to believe in God, as some Buddhists do, I suppose it's OK. But, Buddhist's don't believe God can end suffering. Only the teaching's of the Buddha can help us end suffering through wisdom and the activity of compassion.

In his whole life and in all his teachings the Buddha never said anything about the One God of the desert.
(from "Do Buddhists Believe in God?" -- by Kusala Bhikshu; A talk given at a high school in Los Angeles.)

The One God of the desert has had to learn the ways of men and women of small towns and large cities far from dry sands.

Cesco walks across bridge ascending Ragged Mountain. I trail behind him. He's independent. I catch up by tow line beyond second runway of autumn ski slope. We walk up then cross over to descend. Brown yellow musty leaves cover trail. It is a joy to be alive and walking in the open.

Maybe that's what God is -- "In the Open."

It might help us when we ask where God is -- and why we don't feel God in our life.

Buddhists have nothing to say about God (perhaps) because God is the nothing we have to say about the matter.

Maybe what we call "God" doesn't matter.

Is God truth and love practicing silence in the open?

Is God mattering spirit?

Just because the words "Lord" or "God" or "Yahweh" or "Allah" or even "Brahman" and "Holy Spirit" are used, we have something more to consider. Consider the absence of that which is evoked. If there be absence, we still continue to engage and encounter the reality of our lives as well as the suffering of everyone in the world.

Nothing we say is substitute for kindness and compassion shown our brothers and sisters -- and all sentient beings -- sharing this earth for the time being. Not title, not formula, not incantation intended to make occur the inconceivable to resolve all conflict and animosity. Instead, the fact, act, and mattering spirit of loving-kindness and simple-compassion is the grace of awareness and presence.

We must be the embodied act that takes place in time and space as invitation or response to another's presence. That embodied action is presence -- it is being in the world as we would have love, truth, or spirit be in the world.

No one can do it for us. Not live for us. Not die for us.

Nor is there any substitute for wholeness and incarnation. Our human realization -- a realization of no otherness -- is the intersection where wholeness and fragmentation cross, where embodying act and spiritual intention marry.

If you ask someone if they are married, or why divorce is so rife, they will have to consider the meditation on intersection and embodiment.

No one can do it for us.

But...with us?

When will God appear? When is the Second Coming? When will Manjushri break silence?

Anyone?

Clothespin?

One to one is loving equation. It's where the notion of church meets the notion of the individual human heart. I say "notion" meaning "a general inclusive concept, a whimsical idea."

Thomas Keating eulogized a fellow monk by pointing out how bringing oneself to nothing one will find out who he is. We look for the great grace of diminishment of self. To sacrifice into gradual humiliation and powerlessness, the healing and purification of whatever talents or specialness into the ordinariness of mere human being.

The teaching of the mind ground
Is the basis of Zen study.
The mind ground is
The great awareness
Of being as is.
- Fayan

We are as we are. Whether in health and vigor -- or, in weakness and diminishment -- we are pilgrims on a journey through emptiness and darkness into what we absurdly trust to be the incorporating inclusion of Christ mind and body.

Gratefulness enables us to find peace in all circumstances by freeing us from resentment. As long as we are merely thankful, we give thanks for what we perceive to be beneficial, yet we retain the lurking fear that something harmful may come our way instead. To be grateful is more. It is our courageous trust that life itself – kind or harsh, happy or sad – is good, if only we receive it as gift. The gift is the opportunity either to fully accept or to change what the moment brings.
The moment we trust in this truth, we are at peace. A person at peace will serve as an agent of peace in the world.
Activism for peace is necessary. Yet no matter how sincere and how admirable, it will have no effect unless our own heart is at peace, because gratefulness has made us fearless.
Since fear is at the root of all that is wrong with our world, we start healing the world by overcoming fear through gratefulness.
(-- from gratefulness.org)

Mongers of fear are not grateful people.

We need not listen to them. They frighten because they are frightened. If we know this, we then are able to listen to fear-mongers -- with compassion and forgiveness.

Peace is how fear is forgiven.

There is much to forgive.

Compassion is our way through.

Bob and Tommy drink coffee. Shop door closed. Flag in. Sign turned. Myles upstairs. Dusk comes early.

I explain to you matters
Pertaining to enlightenment,
But don’t try to keep
Your mind on them.
Just turn to the ocean
Of your own essence
And develop practical
Accord with its nature.
- Yangshan

Man with orange hat is looking for Ray McGovern talk in town. We know nothing of it. Chairs and tables are piled onto Tommy's truck. Myles ties down. Bob drives off.

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 1:15

Wood stoves in cabin and kitchen warm. Practice will begin. Offload into barn.

Sunday begins in Belfast church. Ends with film Prairie Home Companion.

Muffins and bread from Chase's Daily. Hugs from Kristen.

No wisdom, no trust.

What I point out to you
Is only that
You shouldn’t allow yourselves
To be confused by others.
Act when you need to,
Without further hesitation or doubt.

People today can’t do this
What is their affliction?
Their affliction is in
Their lack of self-confidence.

If you do not spontaneously
Trust yourself sufficiently,
You will be in a frantic state,
Pursuing all sorts of objects
And being changed
By those objects,
Unable to be independent.
- Linji (d.867)

It is a shame that no trust remains for the current government.

Jesus went out into the hills to pray; and he spent the whole night in prayer to God.
Luke 6:12

It is the mendacity and misconduct that stuns.

I withdraw.

We really do want to see.

The question clear,
The answer deep,
Each particle,
Each instant a reality.
A bird call shrills
Through the mountain dawn:
Look where the old master sits,
A rock in Zen.
- Sodo (1841-1925)

To see is to root oneself. To see is also to follow.

Jesus said to him in reply, "What do you want me to do for you?" The blind man replied to him, "Master, I want to see." Jesus told him, "Go your way; your faith has saved you." Immediately he received his sight and followed him on the way.
--Mark 10:51-52

Follow where?

Follow on the way.

Where?

Just now -- where are you?

Go your way...on the way!

Soon, people will be trying to break into prison. The world will be crazy. The sky will fall. Chicken Little will be feted. Ice shelves will melt. Oceanfront properties will begin 2.8 miles inland. Madness will be a desirable fate. Rapture cheerleaders will close their eyes and click their heels three times.

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

Maybe Elmer Fudd had it right -- maybe the cwazy wabbit needed to be run out of town. Who's to say. We've been at war now for too many years. The next war will be against bad thoughts. We already know the enemy's weakness -- his mind.

He it was who formed the mountains, created the wind, reveals his mind to man, makes both dawn and dark, and walks on the top of the heights of the world; the Lord, the God of Hosts, is his name.
Amos 4:13

We still long for a God who will toss in the towel and say, "I choose you -- you are my favorite." The hell, we say, with everyone else. I am worthy. I am saved.

I give up.

Vote for anyone.

I have to go and pack.

My flying saucer must be nearly here.