Her card was signed once "Merry Mary Christmas." Mary Christine was born on December 25. In dream before waking she visits, coming from where she sat across auditorium to where I stood looking for her after someone asked where she was. Hair shorter than long, in smart brown or rust suit, she arrives at wood high-back chair I have brought to the table.

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)

Our mountain streams are swollen but not rapidly rushing. They are fast in their form waiting in slow frozen memory of what they once were and will be again. Hard wind blows. Land buoys sound swell waves whooshing through tubes, triangles, and tinkling wind chimes surrounding safe harbor of hermitage.

All wisdom is from the Lord,
and it is his own for ever.
The sand of the sea and the raindrops,
and the days of eternity, who can assess them?
The height of the sky and the breadth of the earth,
and the depth of the abyss, who can probe them?
Before all other things wisdom was created,
shrewd understanding is everlasting.
For whom has the root of wisdom ever been uncovered?
Her resourceful ways, who knows them?
One only is wise, terrible indeed,
seated on his throne, the Lord.
He himself has created her, looked on her and assessed her,
and poured her out on all his works
to be with all mankind as his gift,
and he conveyed her to those who love him.
Ecclesiasticus 1:1 - 10

Finch, momma and poppa Cardinal, Chickadee, Nuthatch, and Woodpecker take turns at back feeder before red squirrel zips down hill (then leaves without ascending) pole to green hanging dispensary.

Wood stove wakes from overnight doze. Water splashes shower wall behind kitchen bookshelves. Snowstorm left less through night than it might. We'll drive to Sabattus in a bit.

Mary died somewhere back. But she lives (this morning) in particular, real dream of a Monday before dawn alongside Ragged and Bald Mountains in a blowy gust, where now, quick and acrobatic squirrel balances and eats alone at feeder.

When Death Comes

When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse

to buy me, and snaps his purse shut;
when death comes
like the measle pox;

when death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,

I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering;
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?

And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,

and I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,

and each name a comfortable music in the mouth
tending as all music does, toward silence,

and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth.

When it's over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was a bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it's over, I don't want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened
or full of argument.

I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.
(Poem by Mary Oliver)

In last night's reading William McNamara said no fuss, no lust, and no rust are the properties of the vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. These vows are curiosities in our world. Mary would giggle.

Word hides in words. All we get to see of nature's brilliance is what appears along surface for the duration we look to it. Nature presides even when we are distracted. So too Word resides in nascent kindness and compassion at periphery of our eyes and ears, awareness and wakefulness.

Dreams reveal the sound and sight of what is beyond hearing and seeing.

What is beyond. Hearing. And, seeing.

Revelation. The form of dream.

Avowal of One's restorative wisdom, with our avowal, sets sight on road's uncertain turns.

One's. With ours.

A sudden breath of creation transcending and conveying one in one to each one.

Chuang-tzu said:
"Cherish that
which is
within you."

He sums up contemplative life.

If we live looking out for ourselves, we usually wind up watching out for anybody coming near us. Fear is like that. Everyone is threat because everyone is seen as wanting to take what we are looking out for.

If the candle of craving, lusting, and arrogating is extinguished, then we are left with two options: utter self-defeat, or, contemplative life. Two options but only one choice.

The essence of nirvana is tranquil, uncontrived bliss. Realize your own mind is the true mind, and errant imagining ceases. When errant imagining ceases, you are accurately aware. By virtue of accurate awareness, dispassionately perceptive knowledge arises and thus one finds the nature of reality.
- Hongren (602-675)

February is lovely teacher. Ice and snow, cold and emptiness -- the approach of penitential forty days. Cutting wood for warm cabin to practice in tonight. Walking to brook which is nearly up against both foot bridges with swelling ice. Prayer whose name is empty sound, visits.

WIE: Why do you think it is that there are now so few people interested in the kind of life that you have undertaken?

WM: I think that most people in this modern age are seduced by the workaday world. The average human being is being deceived by hyper-activity, feverish activity. It's dispersed human energy. It is not hitting the target. It is not uplifting the world. It's just a roundelay of repetitive mechanisms, over and over again, with no final end.
George Santyana, the great Harvard professor, said, "A fanatic is one who, having forgotten the end, multiplies the means." And that's what we're all doing. Where are we? We don't know. Who are we? We don't know. We're just busy. And that embarrasses us, and so we keep doing more things to cover over the embarrassment, the emptiness, the hollowness of our lives. So given the condition that we're in, we shy away from the contemplative life.
(from THE e'M'pire, An interview with Father William McNamara, by Carter Phipps, in What is Enlightenment Magazine, http://www.wie.org/j18/mcnam.asp?pf=1)

There's no real cover for emptiness. Emptiness is hollowness and embarrassment uncovered.

Without cover is seen hallowedness and humility -- a holy earthiness faced squarely.

Jesus said: "I am with you always, even until the end of the world." I think he meant that he is with us, all ways. We should even the earth, "un-till" the "end" -- there is no end -- of the world.

So many cultivate the end, ending, finish, Armageddon, Apocalypse, judgment, punishment, reward, just desserts, and vengeful payback. Jesus, in today's meditation, says "un-till" that world of mind. Find balance and equilibrium. Equanimity. Harmony. Be even-minded, even-hearted, even-handed.

In this, he is with us.

This is that which is.

Within us.

Being alone has always appealed. Like the Sufi teacher stating he finds non-being less awkward than existence, I find solitude less awkward than social interaction.

But then again, one is never alone when one is aware of one's solitariness. Being and non-being dissolve like fizzy tablet in glass of water. What remains is sipping.

People who practice the Way should not seek externally. The essence of mind has no defilement; it is originally complete and perfect of itself. Just detach from illusory objects and it is enlightened to suchness as is.
- Master Chinul (1158-1210)

Fire lighted in cabin chapel/zendo at 6:05am. Feeders filled. Dog out. cat out. Both in. Feet very cold as logs and kindling are coaxed in hibernating black firebox. Crunching footsteps, door opens, woman in rust-colored coat bows, sits on cushion, remains still and silent. Fire catches.

Practice rekindles morning presence. Posted times and mere commitment rise like white smoke just as morning prayer rises from odd spiritual gassho of assent and dissent.

In Praise of Imperfect Love

Courtesans of tenth century Japan knew
the keening of the caged copper pheasant,
solo double-note aria for a missing mate,
could be silenced with a mirror

The ideal of a love that completes
masks a yearning for homeostasis,
a second umbilical, island fever,
harmony tighter than unison —

dull as a solved equation;
like the ex-lover who said,
"Being with you is like being alone."
He meant it as a compliment.
(Poem: "In Praise of Imperfect Love" by Jessica Goodfellow, from A Pilgrim's Guide to Chaos in the Heartland. Concrete Wolf Chapbook Series.)

In stillness and silence we engage harmony tighter than unison.

A single mouse came over ice crusted snow to cabin's east side, then disappeared into roof-drop furrow.

Warm vision sits benevolent vigil in sunlit view of Bald Mountain.

Inside house, Jane's voice on WERU.

Her mom, Betty, requests Gorden Bok.

Baking fragrance from kitchen.

The settling simplicity of Saturday hermitage.

Will there be only a limited number of visits to harbour shop remaining?

Coffee completes idyll.

Time for four mile drive.

Each day mountain walks itself.

Cascading ice rounds tumbling solid forms sculpturing. February cold wavelets oh so slowly lean through ice flowing pre-dawn. Night millimetres winter growth under double-plank bridge across from animals' burial ground at turn of brook.

I am nowhere to be found.

The birds have vanished into the sky.
Now the last cloud drains away.
We sit together, the mountain and me,
Until only the mountain remains.
- Li Po (701–762)

Would that be so. And is, but for my seeing it so. I still see ghost of what is no longer there. When I disappear, it is only holy ghost remaining -- as, at, on -- mountain.

At Thursday Evening Conversation eight sit antiphonal to Waterford 103 firebox inserted in fireplace. Finally, in 11th winter of shop at harbour, a warm place with no smoke filling back room, no cold draft sucked in under eaves, nor kabuki dance of dying fire cooling narrowing circle as edge-sitters pull sweaters and fleece tighter. Jack facilitates A Course in Miracles. Delia Mae arrives at end telling how Spring Hill was blocked and stopped for some 30 minutes (again, as it was that morning) with ice-misfortune cars, trucks, and plows. Lola said she prays just coming out driveway to Camden-Belfast Road. Even as we came down from Old Town through her place of prayer earlier for 5:30 conversation, wheels slid on curved road banked hill ice -- which is how we knew we were where we were at.

In car driving back from north of Bangor we talk about how landlord of building we use for harbour shop seems to be pushing us out; how it comes time to (finally) re-think the evolving blueprint of Meetingbrook, long stuffed in dusty closet; now that external cause invites internal affect -- something will change -- what effect will we fashion in this revelation?

So much of life is a dance. So, too, with death.

Just do the steps that you’ve been shown
By everyone you’ve ever known
Until the dance becomes your very own
No matter how close to yours another’s steps have grown
In the end there is one dance you’ll do alone

Keep a fire for the human race
And let your prayers go drifting into space
You never know what will be coming down

Perhaps a better world is drawing near
And just as easily, it could all disappear
Along with whatever meaning you might have found
Don’t let the uncertainty turn you around
(The world keeps turning around and around)
Go on and make a joyful sound

Into a dancer you have grown
From a seed somebody else has thrown
Go on ahead and throw some seeds of your own
And somewhere between the time you arrive and the time you go
May lie a reason you were alive but you’ll never know
(from song "For a Dancer" by Jackson Browne, 1974)

As often as I think of it, I have no grasp on why I am alive, why here, why now. The steps and mis-steps called 'my life' seem the length of a single song over decades and decades playing background over glittering frozen pasture after ice storm. The seduction of each step. Of night with dawn, twilight with dusk, one body with another, one instant of awareness with consciousness itself.

It feels like a poet's version of the ten commandments -- Thou shall not commit, dancing!

My Methodist Grandmother Said

My Methodist
grandmother said
dancing
was adultery
set to music

how right she was

in that sweet sway
breast to breast and
leg to leg
sin comes into its own

if you have never
waltzed
you cannot imagine
the sheer voluptuousness
of it
the light touch
palm to palm
wool and silk
mixed below the waist
your partner's warm breath
on your neck
coming quicker
and quicker
the strength of the man
the yielding of the woman
so incorrect
so atavistic
so unspeakably sweet
he moves toward you
you back away
he pursues you
and with the faintest
pressure
you encourage him
and watch the blood
rush to his face

not a word is spoken
no one sees this
although it's done in public
in full sight of everyone

you touch
and retreat
meet
and touch again
in time to the music
saying yes
no yes
no yes
no
yes

you dance
without thinking of your body
in that gentle
rhythmic
careless
almost copulation
one two three
one
two three

the longest
foreplay
in the western
world
(Poem: "My Methodist Grandmother Said" by Mary Mackey, from Breaking the Fever: Poems. Marsh Hawk Press.)

There's foreplay everywhere. Wind with wind chime, cat with mouse, water with bottle, wood with fire, fingers with keys, silence with sound.

Life is foreplay with death.

Working around hermitage these days has been lovely. Hours cutting back unruly bush outside kitchen and barn, hours moving snow during Valentine's Day storm, cutting wood, repairing plastic against broken window in mud room. I have a body.

So does mountain. its body and my body are not two bodies. Our service and landlord's investments are not at odds. Marriages and divorces -- with accompanying hopes and despairs, are the unpredictable turns and high color, falterings and disconcerting realizations of the dance.

So we are, so we go on. Jory likes the word 'acceptance' over 'forgiveness.' Jesus might have said: "Father, help me accept that they are doing what they are doing, they don't know what they are doing." Forgiveness is a good word. Acceptance is its dear kin.

We are kin to one another.

If we dance, will only the mountain remain?

Am I irretrievably mis-placed? Or...

Now, here, to be, found?

What is wanted? Is truth...

Because they have no high
Opinions of themselves,
The sages’ minds are luminous;
Not caring for status,
They become illustrious;
Being without pride,
They achieve success;
Unassertive, they are supreme.
Because they do not contend,
No one contends with them.
- Lao-tzu

Only this. Which is what truth is like.

Aristotle makes the well-known definition: To say of what is that it is not, or of what is not that it is, is false, while to say of what is that it is, and of what is not that it is not, is true Metaphysics, (1011(b)).

This definition sets down the general principle of correspondence and captures quite well the man on the street view of truth. Aristotle, however, is not the man on the street (he may be peripatetic, but he is hardly pedestrian); if we wish a clearer picture of Aristotle's view of truth, we must look more closely at what he says in other parts of his writings. In this regard, it is helpful to see how Aristotle defines "false" in the lexiconical section of the Metaphysics (1024(b)). For Aristotle, there are three kinds of falseness: false as a thing, false as an account, and false as a person.
(--from TRUTH AND ZEN, By T. P. Kasulis, Transcribed for Buddhism Today by Thich Nu Lien Hoa)

Often feeling false, I long to practice truth.

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)

I will try.

Truth is trying.

Tried (is often) true.

Tilt but re-center.

It always embarrasses me to say, "I love you!" (That's my {hi}story.)

To return to your original state of being,
You must become a master of stillness.
Activity for health’s sake,
Never carried to the point of strain,
Must alternate with perfect stillness.
Sitting motionless as a rock,
Turn next to stillness of mind.
Close the gates of the senses.
Fix your mind upon one object or,
Even better, enter a state
Of objectless awareness.
Turn the mind in upon itself
And contemplate the inner radiance.
- Anonymous

Still, everything inside and outside says "I love you!" without embarrassment. The wind, the snow, the trees, the dog, the cat, the woman, the cup of coffee, the Canadian boots heel to heel. They speak by silence, by presence -- they don't use words, words often misused.

We like the reality of love. It is, and is to be, seen everywhere.

[Teilhard's] vision of love is a spirituality that celebrates the oneness of creation, a spirituality that acknowledges love as the clearest understanding we have of God, of ourselves, of history, and of the cosmos.
- David Tracy, theologian

Teilhard was one of the first scientists to realize that the human and the universe are inseparable. The only universe we know about is the universe that brought forth the human. Teilhard understood this. He understood that the human story and the universe story identified with each other. The immersion into the deep creative powers of the universe is the most direct contact a human can have with the divine. Such is the spirituality that Teilhard makes available to us. A spirituality that is rooted not in the spatial cosmos of Ptolemy, but in the time-developmental universe that the scientists have detected.
- Thomas Berry, geologian

A VISION OF FIRE
The day will come when after harnessing the ether, 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.
-from The Evolution of Chastity
(--quoted in "rediscovering fire," Religion, Science and Mysticism in Teilhard de Chardin, By Ursula King, Department of Theology and Religious Studies, University of Bristol, Issue #39, Fall 2000, http://www.earthlight.org/essay39_king.html

Each one -- you, and you, and you -- are in the fire of a holy spirit's love.

It is there I bow to each of you in mindful silence.

As the poet says, "For love are in you am in i are in we." (e. e. cummings, in poem the great advantage of being alive.

So (t)here!

Deus in adjutorium meum intende. (God, come to my assistance). This is a beginning of prayer.
Domine, ad adjuvandum me festina. (Lord, make haste to help me!) This is how we sculpt awareness of origin.

These days we might say: "God: Help, Now!"

When mind clouds, we are lost in loneliness. When mind clears, we find ourselves in solitude. 'Alone' is a place of integrality. It is a matter of seeing.

We know that there is no Buddhahood to attain apart from this mind. The Realized Ones of the past were just people who understood the mind, and the saints and sages of the present are people who cultivate the mind; students of the future should rely on this principle.
- Master Chinul (1158-1210)

I sleep on floor in front room. My back hurts even though sofa cushions try to shape comfort. I listen to Cesco's breath, sensitive to any changes. Time is approaching when he will leave this place. Cancer. But for now he sleeps. Soon enough a decision will come. When dawn comes we'll walk the mountain together as we do every day, slowly, steadily, accounting every scent, one foot in front of the other.

At dusk last evening, up ahead about 40 yards, a porcupine waddled onto clearing going uphill from us. Cesco didn't notice; neither it us. Cesco looked at me as I looked up the runway snow traveler until it was time for us to veer left into wooded trail past boulder, curving pitch of pine, out to 2nd runway not used by skiers this season. Our invariable walking meditation with the mountain -- option number three.

The disciples had forgotten to take any food and they had only one loaf with them in the boat. Then he gave them this warning, ‘Keep your eyes open; be on your guard against the yeast of the Pharisees and the yeast of Herod’. And they said to one another, ‘It is because we have no bread’. And Jesus knew it, and he said to them, ‘Why are you talking about having no bread? Do you not yet understand? Have you no perception? Are your minds closed? Have you eyes that do not see, ears that do not hear? Or do you not remember? When I broke the five loaves among the five thousand, how many baskets full of scraps did you collect?’ They answered, ‘Twelve’. And when I broke the seven loaves for the four thousand, how many baskets full of scraps did you collect?’ And they answered, ‘Seven’. Then he said to them, ‘Are you still without perception?'
(--Mark 8:14 - 21 )

We often have no clear perception. We don't see how mind opens every possibility and gives to each situation what is called for. Twelve? Seven? Am I still cloudy, without clear perception? (Yes, I am.)

Everybody I talk to is ready to leave
With the light of the morning
They've seen the end coming down long enough to believe
That they've heard their last warning
Standing alone
Each has his own ticket in his hand
And as the evening descends
I sit thinking bout everyman
(--from For Everyman, by Jackson Browne, Asylum 5067, Released: November 1973)

There's a Bodhisattva plea to Browne's lyric. It's not just me, not just you -- rather, there's a mindful awareness of everyone -- no one left out -- ascending in our perceptions. Quietly, steadily -- step by step -- we ascend to an awareness of one another that transforms egoistic isolation, climbing into authentic solitude in the midst of community.

The tension is not the choice between being alone or being with others. The tension is calling awareness to embrace a transcending consciousness wherein solitude and community are not antithetical -- where being alone and being with others are not two things -- but converge in a respectful and responsible presence allowing each to be who and as they are -- with acceptance, compassion, and love.

I will have to practice this and continue practicing this.

With help.

Now.

O Santissime! O Santissima!

Hoeing sighs. Going back to boat. The sign is a sigh. Cultivate this. (Christ help us in this work!)

The Pharisees came up and started a discussion with Jesus; they demanded of him a sign from heaven, to test him. And with a sigh that came straight from the heart he said, ‘Why does this generation demand a sign? I tell you solemnly, no sign shall be given to this generation.’ And leaving them again and re-embarking he went away to the opposite shore.
Mark 8:11 - 13

The true passage is through the heart. Perhaps there is no other way but straight from and through the heart. (Sigh!) Those doing this work must be zen workers doing the odd work of ploughing the sea, hoeing sighs, cultivating the deep of the heart. Any other work plays illusion and deception. (Can this be true?)

Inside and outside are one,
Movement and stillness are the same.
In all these, functioning needs
To be free and clear.
If this is not so then
All the Buddha’s holy sutras
And all of the sayings of the patriarchs
Become mere tangles of empty words.
The Way of Zen
And the Buddha-dharma
Also become dead things.
- Torei (1721-1792)

It has recently and long ago been troubling consideration that matters of belief, theological thought in service to rationalization and manipulation, conviction in matters of interpretation of scripture made stone are then made litmus test then made derisive weapons of exclusion. Are the "signs" asked for by devious man and women merely talking points and fodder-statements to be used by frightening agents of security and control against gathering Spirit of compassion and inclusion? Jesus gave no sign, no signing statement nullifying his essential nature -- a nature longing for truth and love with wisdom.

No sign but re-embarking -- going back to sea.

Going to sea.

Hoeing to 'see.'

The Lord asked Cain, ‘Where is your brother Abel?’ ‘I do not know’ he replied. ‘Am I my brother’s guardian?’ ‘What have you done?’ the Lord asked. ‘Listen to the sound of your brother’s blood, crying out to me from the ground. Now be accursed and driven from the ground that has opened its mouth to receive your brother’s blood at your hands. When you till the ground it shall no longer yield you any of its produce. You shall be a fugitive and a wanderer over the earth.’ Then Cain said to the Lord, ‘My punishment is greater than I can bear. See! Today you drive me from this ground. I must hide from you, and be a fugitive and a wanderer over the earth. Why, whoever comes across me will kill me!’ ‘Very well, then,’ the Lord replied ‘if anyone kills Cain, sevenfold vengeance shall be taken for him.’ So the Lord put a mark on Cain, to prevent whoever might come across him from striking him down.
(--from Genesis 4:1 - 25)

Sometimes it seems we do not know what 'brother' means, what 'sister' means. We think it means family or relationship. And it does. It says same parents. It says one continuous strain of continuation. It means no breakage from origin. It means the sign is everything in existence. If everything is sign, there is no need for 'special' sign. No sign is given because everything signals true relationality.

Lies try to blind us to the ever-present reality. Ever-present reality longs to be seen. Once seen, truth is seen. This is how we testify to truth. This is how we witness truth. Truth is the sign. The sign is not hidden. The sign is obvious.

It takes an act of intentional cowardice to claim not to see what is present and obvious before our eyes.

If I nurture and cultivate, guard and revere true reality, it is enough for now.

It is the practice of hoeing the sea, the practice of seeing, one that sighs with what is seen.

"Come and let us return to the Lord (Teshuvah); For He has torn but he will heal us..."
(Hosea 6:1)

We must be torn (it seems, so wills the God-nature within) from whatever false nature threatens to leave us shorn in tatters and flattered by notions of smarter, better, brighter, more worthy -- the signs of success and power and wealth in this world. This requires holding our nose, holding our breath, and swallowing a poisonous dose of dissemblance.

And so, we practice healing antidote. Sitting and walking, mindful and aware -- we practice the free and clear to be free and clear -- the stillness and movement of this breath we are.

Hoe well. Sigh well. Set out on sea. Return to land well.

Be sighs of streaming grace.

Be guardian, angel.

Zen Master says that God is within our consciousness. Thich Nhat Hanh also says: "...[I]t is safer to approach God through the Holy Spirit than through the door of theology." His book Living Buddha, Living Christ was the reading tonight at Sunday Evening Practice. Six of us, humans and animals, made the practice.

Just know your own mind, and you will grasp countless teachings and infinite subtle meanings without even seeking. That is why the World Honored one said, “Observing all sentient beings, I see they are fully endowed with the knowledge and virtues of Buddhas.” He also said, “All living beings, and all sorts of illusory events, are all born in the completely awake subtle mind of those who realize suchness.”
- Master Chinul

It is a joy to walk February mountain snow with old Border Collie at dusk.

Then fixing his eyes on his disciples he said:
‘How happy are you who are poor: yours is the kingdom of God.
Happy you who are hungry now: you shall be satisfied.
Happy you who weep now: you shall laugh.
Happy are you when people hate you, drive you out, abuse you, denounce your name as criminal, on account of the Son of Man. Rejoice when that day comes and dance for joy, for then your reward will be great in heaven. This was the way their ancestors treated the prophets.
(-from Luke 6:17 - 26)

The trees are prophets in waning light. Old dog is Sherpa guide on narrow paths through branch and trunk over root and rock. Mountain I stand on and mountain across valley are the revelation of this very day this second month this season of February.

Of this I am (gratefully) aware.

How might we capture the conscience of the king?

'And it's not even the play that's the thing,' he said. 'To continue the analogy, in the old days anyone who felt like it could fling a rotten egg at the stage. Today, however, it's the actors who are more likely to rake the hall with machine-gun fire -- they might even toss out a bomb. Think about it, who would you rather be right now? An actor or a member of the audience?'
This was a serious question.
p.6, in novel, Buddha's Little Finger, by Victor Pelevin,

Congress is audience. Citizens and ordinary people are paying for the play. The Supreme Court dresses as supporting extras called when needed. The rest of the world -- those not written into antagonist part in script -- serve at the will of lead actors and hidden producers. Earlier proponents of the Theater of the Absurd are surprised at their prescience. On stage thousands of lines echo in repetitive cavernous staccato, "Alas (Alas) poor (poor) Yorick (Yorick)!" We have to consider that the man of infinite jest remains in the melancholy hands of a sullen actor heading pell-mell toward a tragic conclusion.

Unfortunately the monologues of single-minded men mute intelligent dialogues of thoughtful casts of billions for whom the play is passing strange in its exclusion of their lives.

'And what was the poem about?'
'Oh, it was completely abstract. It was about the stream of time washing away the wall of the present so that new patterns keep appearing on it, and we call some of them the past. Our memory tells us that yesterday really existed, but how can we be sure that all these memories did not simply appear with the first light of dawn?'
'I don't quite understand,' said Vorblei.
'Neither do I,' I said. 'But that's not the point.'
(p.7, Pelevin)

Sara read a lime from her work in progress this afternoon -- it spoke about a pointing finger that thought of itself as a knife. In the case of the absurd drama being enacted at America's National House Theater -- the star actor thinks of himself as Fantasy Marquee Idol. Act two is ending.

The curtain parts. He stands alone.

There is no third act. No ovation.

Only blank stare into footlights.

Who is the joker?

Not one
now, to mock your own grinning? quite chap-fallen?
(-- Hamlet | Act 5, Scene 1)

I always thought the ending was such a waste.

Would we not the same...

Re-write?

Maintain a practice of living quietly with deep listening.

That's what Thay says. Even in a time of terrorism? Thich Nhat Hanh says what is necessary is true presence, being peaceful, as well as awareness that I cannot be happy unless you are happy. This helps us understand what has to be done to realize deep peace in the world.

These days I am noisy, absent, and hard of hearing. It was good to hear Thay's voice during "Humankind" on Maine Public Radio. In the stacks a cinematographer shows Sam and Susan frames of recent footage and sounds of sea.

“What do you mean by the true Buddha,
The true Dharma and the true Way?
Would you be good enough to explain to us?”
The Master said,
“Buddha - this is the cleanness
And purity of the mind.
The Dharma - this is the shining
Brightness of the mind.
The Way – this is the light
That is never obstructed anywhere.
The three are in fact one.
All are empty names and
Have no true reality.”
- Lin-chi (d.867)

In midst of toppling through empty names with no true reality I find temporary footing in a curiosity of breaking news of recent deaths of two women.
In Iraq a woman dies unexpectedly and receives little coverage.

Marine from Bel Air, Md. killed in Iraq, By BEN GREENE, The Associated Press, Feb 8, 2007 4:56 PM BALTIMORE - A 2004 graduate of Fallston High School who followed her older brother into the Marines was killed during fighting in Iraq, the Department of Defense said Thursday.
Cpl. Jennifer Parcell, 20, of Bel Air, Md. died Wednesday "while supporting combat operations in Al Anbar province," a Department of Defense news release said.

Ms Parcell died in a difficult and dangerous country and war.

In Florida a woman dies unexpectedly and every news channel, Internet site, and cable station flashes images of ample bosom and blond hair every minute twenty four hours going. Ms. Smith died in a difficult and dangerous country and celebrity culture.

The Last Attack. To Klaus

Permit me to open by expressing joy and wonder
that we're marching at the head of our companies
in different uniforms under a different command
but with a single aim—to survive

You say to me—look here we should probably let
these boys go home to their Margot to their Kasia
war is beautiful only in parades
but apart from that as we know—mud and blood
and rats

As you speak comes an avalanche of artillery fire
it's that bastard Parkinson who is taking so long
he caught up with us at last when we took a walk
on an irregular route our collars loose at the chin
our hands in our pockets we were on leave already
when Parkinson suddenly reminded us that it was
not the end yet that this blasted war isn't over yet
Poem by Zbigniew Herbert, Translations from the Polish by Alissa Valles

The tumbling continues. Five distinct people sitting around wood stove talk about raising and tending pigs. They are surprised their common experiences converge of a Friday afternoon.

Returning from the district of Tyre, Jesus went by way of Sidon towards the Sea of Galilee, right through the Decapolis region. And they brought him a deaf man who had an impediment in his speech; and they asked him to lay his hand on him. He took him aside in private, away from the crowd, put his fingers into the man’s ears and touched his tongue with spittle. Then looking up to heaven he sighed; and he said to him, ‘Ephphatha’, that is, ‘Be opened’.
--Mark 7:31 - 37

I mull whether being open during tumbling fall has any useful value. I pray for the woman killed in Iraq. I pray for the woman felled in Florida.

I like what Thich Nhat Hanh says about deep listening. I like what Mark tells about the man's healing release.

Wood stove has made the place warm and comfortable.

It's me that's tumbling. Earth quietly turns. Horses in Sam's story stand balanced on rail-less flatbed truck rumbling around corner. (Everybody winces.)

I ask high school coed waiting for her mother if she learned anything in school today. "Probably," she says.
Anything you remember? "Not particularly!" she concludes.

She is eating an apple.

Chickadee and moma Cardinal look around from feeder. I imagine when walking past they call out 'Thanks'. It's nothing. Only seeds. I silently pray they might save the world.

Some people think that they will practice the dharma once they have finished with their worldly business. This is a mistaken attitude
because our work in the world never finishes. Work is like a ripple of water continually moving on the surface of the ocean. It is very difficult to break free from our occupations in order to practice dharma. The busy work with which we fill our lives is only completed at the time of our death.
--Geshe Kelsang Gyatso, Meaningful to Behold

Prayer has gone dark in me. So it matters that there is prayer in frosty morning at bird feeders and monasteries scattered everywhere. Cracking open shell and silence. There is great faith in such simple acts.

Iranian Cleric Warns U.S. on Attacks
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS, Published: February 8, 2007, Filed at 6:52 a.m. ET

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) -- If the United States were to attack Iran, the country would respond by striking U.S. interests all over the world, Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said Thursday.

Speaking to a gathering of Iranian air force commanders, Khamenei said: ''The enemy knows well that any invasion would be followed by a comprehensive reaction to the invaders and their interests all over the world.''

World stage and world war. There is no prayer in politics -- only posturing to get in photo-op with rented god for daily prat and prance.

My community is right here.

Why I Need the Birds

When I hear them call
in the morning, before
I am quite awake,
my bed is already traveling
the daily rainbow,
the arc toward evening;
and the birds, leading
their own discreet lives
of hunger and watchfulness,
are with me all the way,
always a little ahead of me
in the long-practiced manner
of unobtrusive guides.

By the time I arrive at evening,
they have just settled down to rest;
already invisible, they are turning
into the dreamwork of trees;
and all of us together —
myself and the purple finches,
the rusty blackbirds,
the ruby cardinals,
and the white-throated sparrows
with their liquid voices —
ride the dark curve of the earth
toward daylight, which they announce
from their high lookouts
before dawn has quite broken for me.
(Poem: "Why I Need the Birds" by Lisel Mueller, from Alive Together: New and Selected Poems. Louisiana State University Press.)

Unobtrusive guides engaged in prayer of dreamwork and gratitude -- has there ever been need for charter or imprimatur? These brothers and sisters feather forgiveness as they gather Eucharist for all of the starving souls passing unnoticed.

Swoop and glide.

Dear spirit friends near.

Break shell.

Care for core.

Disappear there.

Hallow here.

If truth is the only reality, where do we go when lies occur?

D.T. Suzuki says: "Tasting, seeing, experiencing, living - all these demonstrate that there is something common to enlightenment experience and our sense-experience; the one takes place in our innermost being, the other on the periphery of our consciousness. Personal experience thus seems to be the foundation of Buddhist philosophy. In this sense Buddhism is a radical empiricism or experientialism, whatever dialectic later developed to probe the meaning of the enlightenment experience." (D.T. Suzuki, Mysticism: Christian and Buddhist, N.Y., 1957, p. 48)

Now the great obstacle to mutual understanding between Christianity and Buddhism lies in the Western tendency to focus not on Buddhist experience, which is essential, but on the explanation, which is accidental and which indeed Zen often regards as completely trivial and even misleading.

Buddhist meditation, but above all that of Zen, seeks not to explain but to pay attention, to become aware, to be mindful, in other words to develop a certain kind of consciousness that is above and beyond deception by verbal formulas - or by emotional excitement. Deception in what? Deception in its grasp of itself as it really is. Deception due to diversion and distraction from what is right there - consciousness itself.
(--in Zen and The Birds of Appetite, By Thomas Merton, from Chapter 3, A Christian Looks At Zen)

Everything quiets. Sunlight comes through hermitage front room. Tea cup cools. Dog tags jingle from kitchen. I have gone into solitude.

When there are clouds and fog everywhere, the world is dark, but that does not mean the sun has decomposed. Why is there no light? The light is never destroyed; it is just enshrouded by clouds and fog. The pure mind of all living beings is like this, merely covered up by the dark clouds of obsession with objects, arbitrary thoughts, psychological afflictions, and view and opinions. If you can just keep the mind still so that errant thought does not arise, the reality of nirvana will naturally appear. This is how we know the inherent mind is originally pure.
- Hongren (602-675)

Errant thoughts bump into me all day. They excuse themselves, then like a well-trained telemarketer they make their pitch while telling you how inconvenient "those" telemarketers are. You are tempted to disconnect phone. You do try to disconnect annoyance at intrusion. But thoughts that have lost their way find you. Tea? Fruit bar? If I offer you hospitality will you go away?

The Lyric

Suffering
lament, sorrow and wild
joy commingle in

the lyric — a collective
sigh of relief comes cascading
out of the blue —

a yearning to submerge
in life like the swimmer
in the pool forgetful

immersed and quenched —
water trailing scattered
diamonds in a rustling

voice of resigned subsidence
as though in the same stroke
everyone alive were speaking through you —
(Poem: "The Lyric" by Tom Clark, from Light & Shade: New and Selected Poems. Coffee House Press.)

Prayer is the resonance of many voices allowed through you. To pray constantly is to let this resonance glide through awareness. Not the content always, but the form and formless passage through.

No explanation of pain and cruelty has ever satisfied. In prayer we abandon explanation and listen to experience. In this abandonment we arrive in room like cat suddenly aware it is not alone. It jumps up on couch. Steps carefully over letters. Kneads available belly and chest. Purrs.

Free your minds, then, of encumbrances; control them, and put your trust in nothing but the grace that will be given you when Jesus Christ is revealed. Do not behave in the way that you liked to before you learnt the truth, but make a habit of obedience.
(--1 Peter 1:13 - 14 Reading from Terce, Wednesday Office)

This revelation is the territory of abandonment.

Do we dare exploring?

Nothing.

But.

The grace.

[Long version]:

I imagine peace. This icon of imagination is what remains of us. We are disappearing. Do you hear that? It is silence. The icon is embedded in quarter-cut of wood. Hiding. In plain sight. No one sees it. Welcome to our time. Now go away. This is no place for us. Away, away!

The Art of Peace begins with you.
Work on yourself and your appointed
Task in the Art of Peace.
Everyone has a spirit that can be refined,
A body that can be trained in some manner,
A suitable path to follow.
You are here for no other purpose
Than to realize your inner divinity
And manifest your innate enlightenment.
Foster peace in your own life
And then apply the Art to all that you encounter.
- Morihei Ueshiba (1883-1969)

I cannot apply art. Nothing innate manifests. It is time to disappear. No sound, no trace, no epitaph, no silly pretense you will be missed. Just go.

St Paul Miki (1564/6 - 1597)
He was born in Japan between 1564 and 1566. He joined the Society of Jesus and preached the gospel to the Japanese people with great success. When a persecution of the Catholics arose he was arrested together with twenty-five others. Mocked and tortured, they were eventually taken to Nagasaki on 5 February 1597, bound to crosses and speared.
(Universalis, Tuesday 6 February 2007, Saints Paul Miki and his Companions, Martyrs)

We don't have a martyrology of Nagasaki 9 August 1945. Apparently we'd scuttled the idea we were a civilized and intelligent culture capable of spirituality purporting nearness to God. Just as well.

I don't remember exactly when God turned face from us. Looking elsewhere has become our new religion. God is not needed in this practice. God is locked away in museum and library leafing through uncatalogued books like an aging actress rummaging press clips from former glory. It is after hours. No security alarm protects the premises. No one wants in. What would they do with such a forlorn face that says nothing and remains silent in stuffy rooms?

A study of Schelling's late philosophy of mythology, despite the renewed interest it presently enjoys, still needs some justification. Why should we spend time and effort on a demanding philosophical text based on often outdated and inadequate historical information about myths? And why revisit a philosophy that claims to incorporate revelation, yet has been criticized for bending revelation to its own pre-established concepts, while in the process corrupting the methods of theology as well as of philosophy? The answer may be brief. Because Schelling (1775–1854) was among the first to recognize the myth as an independent form of consciousness, irreducible to rational thought or to a prescientific interpretation of nature or history. For him, mythology constituted an essentially religious phenomenon, marked by polytheism but indispensable for the rise of an inclusive monotheism, that is, to an idea of God that incorporates creation within God's Being. Despite the undeniable flaws of his work and the enormous progress since made in this area, no one has yet surpassed the scope and intellectual depth of the two-volume treatise on myth written during the final twenty years of Schelling's career. Schelling understood that neither mythology nor revelation could be simply juxtaposed to philosophical truth. The two had to be integrated or one would inevitably exclude the other.
(-- from The Role of Mythology in Schelling's Late Philosophy, by Louis Dupré, Yale University, in The Journal of Religion, Volume 87, Number 1, January 2007)

Edge nears. Over edge you imagine a fall to some inexplicable depth. You look over expecting to see a bottom far below. That is comforting. You envision a body broken on craggy ledge or limbs lifeless balancing momentarily on cracked surface of water. These images are wishful. What really is seen upon looking over nearing edge is nothing like these images. The sight is of your town and city. Ordinary people go about banking, buying insurance, making investments, managing real estate, and writing sermons, formulating dissertations sure to stun outsiders into sudden and solid salvation. Thank you, oh, thank you!

"Occasionally, even experienced mountaineers are faced with precipices that force them to say,'This is too much.' When I tell my friend Ferenczi about this, he'll say, 'You can convince me of lots of things, Sigi, but this is impossible.'"
--p.55, in novel The Discovery of Heaven, by Harry Mulisch

What is 'this' impossible? This is what is seen. It's why we never see God. God is impossible.

Etymology: Middle English, from Anglo-French & Latin; Anglo-French, from Latin impossibilis, from in- + possibilis possible
1 a : incapable of being or of occurring b : felt to be incapable of being done, attained, or fulfilled : insuperably difficult impossible deadline>
2 a : extremely undesirable : UNACCEPTABLE b : extremely awkward or difficult to deal with impossible on the set>
(Mirriam-Webster)

The edge of what? Of 'what is?' What does that mean? And why is God unacceptable? (This is where Christian friends lift eyebrow with certain assessment of apostasy, pale implication of anti-this/anti-that, a facile wispy dream of anti-Christ desacralizing mysterium tremendum et fascinans, an unwashed and unsaved rabble, hoards (to be pitied and prayed for) not on solid ground -- neighbors, fellow and sister citizens, not to be trusted, needing to be informed (or informed on), for the love of God and obedience to God and (naturally) to God's dutiful especially washed kinfolk.

There's a curious calculus occurring. A Stockholm Syndrome computes us. Politicians, priests, ministers, pundits, administrators, and populace are abducted hostages, hostages exhibiting loyalty to the hostage-taker. These hostage-takers smirk and strut with torn constitution and tattered bible mouthing mantras of compliance, complicity, and consecration to the new power, new idol, new deity on the block -- themselves.

An angry people slowly suspect anger is wrong. Tony and Chris say this view is wrong.

FORMULATION: SELF AND WORLD
The path beyond anger is formulation. By formulation I do not mean detached theories about the atomic bomb, but rather the process by which the hibakusha re-creates himself--establishes those inner forms which can serve as a bridge between self and world. Ideology and "world view"--often in their unconscious components--are central to the process, and by studying their relationship to A-bomb mastery, we gain a sense of their significance for mental life in general. Formulation includes efforts to re-establish three essential elements of psychic function: the sense of connection, of organic relationship to the people as well as non-human elements in one's life space, whether immediate or distant and imagined; the sense of symbolic integrity, of the cohesion and significance of one's life, here including some form of transcendence of the A-bomb experience; and the sense of movement, of development and change, in the continuous struggle between fixed identity and individuation. Conflicts we have discussed over issues of trust and peace, as well as struggles with residual anger, are part of the "psychological work" involved. And the internal "A-bomb philosophy" which results--the imagery of formulation--not only enhances mastery but, in an important sense, contains the mental representation of mastery or its absence.
(--p.367, in Death in Life: Survivors of Hiroshima, by Robert Jay Lifton; Random House, 1967)

Anger is not-yet transformed into creativity. I have not morphed into palette or paean -- peaceful, wise, above-it-all, antidote to noxiousness. I am, rather, disheveled beyond belief.

I know where the museum is. I can see the library. The photographs and pamphlets are carefully preserved. Some vague amorphous thought drifts through walls and windows catching slanting light just out of focus on shimmering branch.

[Short version]:

Haiku
This February --
Debris, non-formulation
Not yet -- this cold time.

Robert Jay Lifton writes: We may define the survivor as one who has come into contact with death in some bodily or psychic fashion and has himself remained alive. (from chapter 12, THE SURVIVOR, in Death in Life, ibid)

I remember once being nearly electrocuted in Jolon, California in 1970. I fell back stunned and repeated over and over: "I'm still alive, I'm still alive, I'm still alive."

(Cat sits by outlet waiting for something hidden to appear. Old dog barks from barn to be let in.)

Mostly, I want to be kind.
And nobody, of course, is kind,
or mean,
for a simple reason.

And nobody gets out of it, having to
swim through the fires to stay in
this world.

*

And look! look! look! I think those little fish
better wake up and dash themselves away
from the hopeless future that is
bulging toward them.

*

And probably,
if they don't waste time
looking for an easier world,

they can do it.
(--from poem, Dogfish, by Mary Oliver)

Mu-ge settles on couch. Cesco on rug. Saskia souths from north.

We go on.

Folly? As I live. And breathe.

These days are pivotal days. Everything might tumble ankle deep in rubble. Iraq could implode with each explosion. American administration could turn and face firing squad of final rejection based on having no face. War could expand into another Middle East country with air strikes, nuclear weapons, and vitriolic response. My mind wavers on weak beams -- additional weight could collapse it into itself leaving no trace of sanity. Luckily, it is Monday. No heart attack strikes. Just pain.

Most people think of enlightenment as a kind of magical attainment, a state of being close to perfection. At this level, one can perform amazing feats, see past and future lives of others, and tune in to the inner workings of the universe. This may be possible for a number of special beings, but for most of us enlightenment is much more in line with what Suzuki Roshi describes. It means having a quality of "beginningness," a fresh, simple, unsophisticated view of things. To have "beginner's mind" in how we approach things is a major teaching. In many ways, the process of enlightenment is clearing away the thoughts, beliefs, and ideas that cloud our ability to see things as they really are in their pristine form.
(--David A. Cooper, Silence, Simplicity and Solitude, from Everyday Mind, edited by Jean Smith )

My "beginner's mind" feels like a dizzy child spinning too long with no focal point. Humans are points in time, part of narrative with subsequence. ("In mathematics, a subsequence of some sequence is a new sequence which is formed from the original sequence by deleting some of the elements without disturbing the relative positions of the remaining elements." --Wikipedia) We are always new. Disconcertingly, because we seem excerpted and inserted -- a random experience not unlike being flung with centrifugal force from one's life out into desolate otherness.

Once, in calm centripetal contemplation, the call into center was clarion. A circle was possible. A circle with no inside nor outside might be called the sound of wind-chime in edgeless wind. I have taken this address into my awareness and feel the need to forward mail to it. Once there, mail will be brought to table, placed down, unopened, remaining in disarray until too late for action requested within.

Prologue: Schoenberg's Moses und Aron
"Unique, eternal, omnipresent, invisible and unimaginable God!" These words, spoken by Moses at the beginning of Arnold Schoenberg Moses und Aron, serve as a leitmotif that recurs not only through the entire opera but also through all of Schoenberg's religious works.
Moses und Aron gives the clearest and deepest expression to the problem to which the mature Schoenberg kept returning: the conflict between the idea of a unique, transcendent God, beyond all thought and imagination, and the religious need for images. The former was for Schoenberg the central tenet of Jewish faith, and its great historical contribution to humanity; the latter, the inevitable medium for the human response to God, and the wellspring of the artist's vocation.
(--from Theological Aesthetics: God in Imagination, Beauty, and Art; Book by Richard Viladesau; Oxford University Press, 1999)

What is the human response to God? (Or, put differently: Is "what is" the human response to God?) Is everything that is what it is an expression of what we humans conceive God to be? War? Love? Destruction? Kindness? Hatred? Joy at hearing a dear voice?

Composer John Cage (1912-1992) sat us down for one of his human responses:

In perhaps the ultimate statement of this aesthetic, he wrote 4'33', a piece of total silence on the part of the performer, into which the random sounds of the world enter. This cemented his beliefs that the goal of music was a "purposelessness," and that the role of the composer was to create situations in which sounds could "simply be." (-- in Twentieth Century Composer Index)

To simply be -- a duration of mere attendance -- the perennial invitation to show up and grace the moment.

O Man! Take heed!
What says the deep midnight?
"I slept, I slept--
from a deep dream have I been awakened--
The world is deep,
and more deeply thought than day.
Deep is its pain
Joy--deeper still than heartache.
Pain says: Die!
but all joy desires eternity--
desires deep, deep eternity!"
-- Nietzsche, Mitternachtslied

There is a covering pain encircling us. There is a following joy insinuating under cover. Bitter cold lays on ground. Purring cat nuzzles left arm. Phone message from northern edge of Maine says "I am here" in some alchemy of air wave communication beyond my comprehension. In Iraq, Abu Abdullah, a shop owner who lost two of his sons in Saturday’s bombing of a Baghdad market, looks up at a point far beyond eyesight as he surveys what cannot be fathomed, that which is lost-- all of a sudden.

Let's call it soul fracturing. Mind has already splintered. What are we looking at? Is our face any recognizable image?

How do we come to look exactly like ourselves? How does insertion of the word "surrender" or incarnation of the word into flesh or removal of word in silence -- how do these variations dissolve distortion into clear resemblance of Original Spirit Inspiriting?

W. B. Yeats called the moment of recognizing oneself a "withering into the truth."

What if Sonny is right?

What if this life is hell?

What mythic visitation will draw us hither, thither, yon?

Writing of the time of the Irish Heroic Age in his play "At the Hawk's Well," W. B. Yeats came to the end of his script with the following:

[Note: Aoife was a warrior queen whom Cuhulain defeated in battle. The two subsequently became lovers. After his departure, Aoife bore Cuchulain a son, Conlaoch, who was later killed by his, father unwittingly, in combat.]


YOUNG MAN The clash of arms again!


OLD MAN 0, do not go! The mountain is accursed;

Stay with me, I have nothing more to lose,

I do not now deceive you.



YOUNG MAN I will face them.

(He goes out, no longer, as if in dream, but shouldering his spear, and calling)

He comes! Cuchulain, son of Sualtim, comes!

(The MUSICIANS stand up; one goes to centre with folded cloth. The others unfold it. While they do so they sing. During the singing, and while hidden by the cloth, the OLD MAN goes out. When the play is performed with Mr. Dulac's music, the musicians do not rise or unfold the cloth till after they have sung the words "a bitter life.")

(Songs for the unfolding and folding of the cloth)

Come to me, human faces,

Familiar memories;

I have found hateful eyes

Among the desolate places,

Unfaltering, unmoistened eyes.



Folly alone I cherish,

I choose it for my share;

Being but a mouthful of air,

I am content to perish;

I am but a mouthful of Sweet air.



O lamentable shadows,

Obscurity of strife!

I choose a pleasant life

Among indolent meadows;

Wisdom must live a bitter life.

(Then they fold up the cloth, singing)



"The man that I praise,"

Cries out the empty well,

"Lives all his days

Where a hand on the bell

Can call the milch cows

To the comfortable door of his house.

Who but an idiot would praise

Dry stones in a well?"



"The man that I praise,"

Cries out the leafless tree,

"Has married and stays

By an old hearth, and he

On naught has set store

But children. and dogs on the floor.

Who but an idiot would praise

A withered tree?"

(They go out)


Curtain

Of course.

Folly. And mouthful of air.

Of course!

Tops of Ragged and Bald are ice/snow glazed seen from middle of Hosmer Pond.

The line of dogs tied truck to trunk of tree just off frozen pond leap and bark straining to reach sled with stretch of harness clips as one by one they are collar-walked front legs off ground to their designated spot on sleddog line. It is a glorious day at Toboggan Nationals as two and four person waxed toboggans take 8 or 9 second run down chute yelling and laughing out onto ice then coasting or spilling to end of ride as photographers barely avoid upending from errant spin and tumble.

Yes to lamb and sausage grilling, beer and coffee sipping, tubes and skis descending, faces and thighs reddening, snowmobiles and dog-sleigh rushing and mushing, teams and toboggans screeching, -- all in festival blue sky crisp new snow white sunlight clear afternoon in Maine on thick frozen ice of February.

Everywhere Buddha and Christ smile and play. We have come to see what we can see.

People today have been confused for a long time. They do not know that their own mind is the real Buddha. They do not know that their own essence is the real Dharma. Wishing to seek Dharma, they attribute it to remote sages; wishing to seek Buddhahood, they do not observe their own mind.
- Master Chinul (1158-1210)

And it is joyful.

Elsewhere, not so joyful. It was not 92 killed in Baghdad yesterday as first reported. There a different kind of emotion and sensation exploded in their Saturday celebration of ordinary life in market and shops and holding fast to hope.

February 4, 2007, At Least 130 Die as Blast Levels Baghdad Market, By RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr. and QAIS MIZHER

BAGHDAD, Sunday, Feb. 4 — A mammoth truck bomb obliterated a popular central Baghdad market on Saturday, ripping through scores of shops and flattening apartment buildings, killing at least 130 people and wounding more than 300 in the worst of a series of horrific attacks against Shiites in recent weeks.
(--The New York Times online)

Buddha and Christ, everywhere in that square, weep and mourn. They come to see what we have come to see.

Enlightenment sees all of what is seen. Nothing left out. No editing or censuring, no picking and choosing. The power of positive thinking has no sway over the power of negative feeling -- it is not a psychological game of bait and switch, ignore and project, or rush to shift consciousness into some hastily constructed straw house claiming "Everything is happening as it should" and "This is what must happen for the coming age to unfold." These soggy proclamations drip with despair masking as prescience and prophesy.

Enlightenment will not dwell in artificial or fantastical worlds other than what is real, seen, and felt through and through in the realm of everyday, concrete, and integral experience. We need not wait. We need not bait. We need not hide behind the dual delusions saying, "It's so great!" or "It's too late!"

What we need is to see what can be seen, feel what can be felt, think what can be thought, be what can be.

[T]his enlightenment of the Buddha's was profound and brilliant, accurate and powerful, and also warm and compassionate. It was like the sun behind the clouds. Anyone who has taken off in an airplane on a grim and gloomy day knows that beyond the cloud cover the sun is always shining. Even at night the sun is shining, but then we can't see it because the earth is in the way, and probably our pillow also. The Buddha explained that behind the cloud cover of thoughts--including very heavy clouds of emotionally charged thoughts backed up by entrenched habitual patterns--there is continual warm, bright, loving intelligence constantly shining. And even though in the midst of thoughts, emotions, and habitual patterns, intelligence may become dulled and confused, it is still this intelligence in the midst of thoughts and emotions and habits that makes them so very captivating, so resourceful and various, so inexhaustible.
--Samuel Bercholz, Entering the Stream

If we look steadily and deeply -- as and what and who we are now, have been, and will continue to be -- we come to see the whole of it. We see it without explanation or excuse, no rationalization or wishful regret, neither reaching for 'delete' nor 'enhance' buttons. Rather, we come to a region of reality wherein we trust.

The Virtue of Trusting One's Mind

When goats don't want to move,
they don't make sounds.

They fold legs at bald knees,
bend rough necks to earth,
and just sink down.

They never

rant, rail,
protest, declaim,
debate, explain, and then,
head bowed, plod meekly
forward anyway,

as I did
as a child—
and still do now.
(Poem: "The Virtue of Trusting One's Mind" by Marcia Slatkin, from A Woman Milking: Barnyard Poems. Word Press.)

A morning hug without words. Sunlight pressing on dusty window panes. Sleeping old dog with nose against last night's food bowl now raising head detecting passing scent of one he loves, settling back again with mouth sounds below outer rim of bowl.

It is Sunday morning. Bob will preach at Our Lady of Good Hope. Tommy will be reading the New York Times back in the kitchen. We'll stop in to bow and listen. Jesus will say to Simon: "Put out into deep water and pay out your nets for a catch." And we will ponder deep water, the men and women and children laughing on the ice, weeping in the market, and forever and ever opening doors and closing doors, arriving and leaving, going through barn and walking up path to this bridge and that until the clearing is under our feet and before our gaze.

And we step.

And we see.

With each one.

I've been thinking about traveling to Iraq.

Spiritually, many of us are already there. There's a map that intersects spiritual reality and material reality. Often the coordinates of the body are not the coordinates of the soul. It seems there is a curious choice to make when we experience dialectical coordinates -- namely: stay divided and dualistic, or, consolidate and converge.

Dialectic (of conversation) is "the Hegelian process of change in which a concept or its realization passes over into and is preserved and fulfilled by its opposite." (Merriam-Webster)

One way gives life. The other resembles death.

Willing to die?

Dozens Killed in Baghdad Bombing
By RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr. and QAIS MIZHER

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Feb. 3 — A bomb concealed in a truck destroyed a packed market in central Baghdad late this afternoon, killing at least 92 people and wounding more than 200 more in one of the worst single acts of violence to hit the capital since the United States invasion almost four years ago.

The bomb leveled at least 10 buildings and coffee shops and obliterated market stalls in a largely Shiite enclave less than a half mile from the Tigris River. The blast hit at about 5 p.m., just as people were finishing their dinner shopping. Many of the dead were inside the razed buildings, witnesses said.

Police said they believed the attack was the work of a suicide bomber.

Imagine if 500,000 ordinary civilians went to Iraq and were willing to simply walk the streets, sip coffee, offer to assist those suffering, and take the blasts when they occur.

Philosopher and semanticist Alford Korzybski said, "A map is not the territory it represents but if correct, it has a similar structure to the territory, which accounts for its usefulness."

So many lead useful lives. And many find their lives useless.

Hearing and reading about Iraq might have some use, but is decidedly not the war and strife in Iraq. Perhaps if half a million or a million Americans traveled to Iraq to join in the reality -- not as mercenaries or combatants, but as brother and sister human beings -- a territory of un-terror might be put on the map. The dichotomy of matter and spirit needs to be repaired. Word, as another instance of inspiration in our world, might impregnate peace to instantiate and transubstantiate flesh.

Alas, our plight!

Willing to live?

Toboggans will arrive at Ragged atop cars this morning. The Nationals run for two days. Light snow. Temperature hovering at 31F.

When you set out to look for the Way,
At once it changes to something
That is to be sought in your self.
When sight becomes no-sight,
You come to possess the jewel,
But you have not yet fully penetrated into it.
Suddenly one day everything is empty like space
That has no inside or outside, no bottom or top,
And you are aware of one principle
Pervading all the ten thousand things.
You know then that your heart
Is so vast that it can never be measured.
- Daikaku (1213-1279)

Piece by piece drops away what we've thought was our identity. This is as it must be. We are not who we think we are.

Solitude might be a good idea, but with absence by absence that good idea actuates itself and becomes flesh. We are left holding less and less until nothing is held as we look around for what is gone. Obituaries point the way. Dawn nudges aside night. Despite ourselves, light.

Five
Do you imagine the universe is agitated? Go into the desert at night and look out at the stars. This practice should answer the question. The superior person settles her mind as the universe settles the stars in the sky. By connecting her mind with the subtle origin, she calms it. Once calmed, it naturally expands, and ultimately her mind becomes as vast and immeasurable as the night sky.
(--from Hua Hu Ching, by Lao Tzu, Translated by Brian Walker)

(Old dog hobbles out of room. Breeze waves branch topped with wet snow. Cat comes in through barn. Dog goes out to pee. Returns. Cat goes out through barn.)

Trust

It's like so many other things in life
to which you must say no or yes.
So you take your car to the new mechanic.
Sometimes the best thing to do is trust.

The package left with the disreputable-looking
clerk, the check gulped by the night deposit,
the envelope passed by dozens of strangers—
all show up at their intended destinations.

The theft that could have happened doesn't.
Wind finally gets where it was going
through the snowy trees, and the river, even
when frozen, arrives at the right place.

And sometimes you sense how faithfully your life
is delivered, even though you can't read the address.
(Poem: "Trust" by Thomas R. Smith, from Waking before Dawn. Red Dragonfly Press.)

As the landlord appears to want his brother to take the upstairs of the shop from us; as the sea finds more ice urging it swell; as courtesy and civility are tired concepts for our society; as 2+2=4 is a quaint notion only for reality-based folks; as so many of us require packaged programming to set our agenda; as fewer and fewer seek wisdom and good counsel; as we seem to forget or ignore the Spirit of Truth standing by our side; as we try to remember our authentic sound, genuine voice, and original name; as morning light shows green and white behind iconography of Mother/Child, Buddha, and Christ -- as all these things come to pass -- we come to see "how faithfully ...our life / is delivered...".

"Is" is delivered to us. "Is" is delivering us. "Is" is origin and destination.

Thirteen
The tiny particles which form the vast universe are not tiny at all. Neither is the vast universe vast. These are notions of the mind, which is like a knife, always chipping away at the Tao, trying to render it graspable and manageable. But that which is beyond form is ungraspable, and that which is beyond knowing is unmanageable. There is, however, this consolation: She who lets go of the knife will find the Tao at her fingertips. (-- Lao Tzu, Walker)

Let tobogganers frolic, snow fall, plans fold, dreams flit, worries flee, and love free. It is Saturday in February. Everywhere, everyone, is -- as is.

Twenty-Four
Subtle awareness of the truth of the universe should not be regarded as an achievement. To think in terms of achieving it is to place it outside your own nature. This is erroneous and misleading. Your nature and the integral nature of the universe are one and the same: indescribable, but eternally present. Simply open yourself to this. (--Lao Tzu, Walker)

This is our morning blessing.

You are this.

This alone.

I see my shadow.

Hugh C. writes noting: Feb 1 Feastday Of Brigid (Bridget)

Imbolg (ie in the belly) is the name given to Feb 1; Candlemas on Feb 2, and Groundhog Day in America are derived from the observance of the Quarter Day (ie Brigid's Day) in Scotland and Ireland. Candlemas relates to the fire of Brigid who in turn represents the changing and lengthening of daylight hours, the first lambs born and the first early signs of Spring. In highland Scotland a serpent called Ivor (a Viking name) would poke its head out of its hole indicating early Spring. From this ritual the groundhog tradition in the U.S. was most likely derived.

In the shadow under bright moon falling between Ragged and Bald, I dwell uncertainly. Like the gap found between faith and fact the Friar Juniper falls into (The Bridge of San Luis Rey) seeking the intuition of accident or plan in the deaths of five people, I look up from my winter and detect lacunae, blank spaces or missing parts into which I wander with reserved reverence. I dwell in the between.

Desperation is not destination. If there is such a thing (or such a being) as God's love -- such will become apparent wherever one is.

Sometimes, winter is whited out. Not its own elaboration. But part of what is...missing.

KAWABATA YASUNARI'S Nobel Prize speech cites Ryokan's waka on the seasons, which is a variation on the "Original Face" verse, as similarly expressive of the "essence of Japan":

Naki ato no
Katami tomo kana
Haru wa hana
Natsu hototogisu
Aki wa momijiba.

In remembrance
After I am gone—
In spring, the cherry blossoms,
In summer, the cuckoo's song,
In autumn, the crimson leaves.

Note the way that Ryokan, who deletes the reference to winter snow and the modifier "suzushi," subtly shifts Dogen's metaphysical view of impermanence into a very personal statement.
(--from The Zen Poetry of Dogen: Verses from the Mountain of Eternal Peace, Book by Steven Heine; Tuttle Publishing, 1997)

Ryokan, in the poem, says nothing of winter. In that nothing said, winter is referenced precisely as it is -- nothing sudden, nothing separated.

Ryokan was a monk of the Soto Zen sect, which was brought to Japan from China by Dogen (1200-1253), the founder of Eihei-ji monastery in Fukui Prefecture, the largest and most famous monastery in Japan. Dogen's teaching emphasized two main points: (1) "shikantaza," themeless sitting in zazen, that is, abandoning all thoughts of good or bad, enlightenment or illusion, and just sitting; and (2) "shusho ichigyo," "practice and enlightenment are one." There is no sudden enlightenment, and enlightenment cannot be separated from one's practice. For these reasons, Soto Zen is usually contrasted with Rinzai Zen, with its use of koans during zazen and its striving for kensho, an instantaneous, profound insight into reality. Generally speaking, Rinzai Zen tends to be somewhat violent and severe, while Soto Zen is usually more restrained and quiet.
As a Soto Zen monk, Ryokan first followed the traditional pattern of communal life in the monastery, then a period as an "unsui," a pilgrim monk drifting from place to place like "clouds and water" (unsui) visiting other masters. Ryokan could have become the head of a temple or taken some other position in a large monastery, but he was not interested. His severe training had made him not austere or remote but more open and kind. Therefore, he "returned to the marketplace with bliss-bestowing hands," the state depicted in the last of the well-known Zen series of the ten oxherding pictures, and the culmination of all Buddhist practice.
(--pp. 15-16, in One Robe, One Bowl: The Zen Poetry of Ryokan, John Stevens; Weatherhill, 1977)

The shadow I see drifts from place to place without fixed reference or residence. The winter of this mind sees its shadow and comprehends that the between will lengthen. This prospect is OK. While the saying might be "The raft is not the shore," I see that between raft and shore is "unsui" -- clouds and water -- above and below, each person's passage. We drift sensing no control, no origination, and no destination.

In Catholic Christian calender it is the Feast of The Presentation of The Lord. From the Office of Readings for this feast, we read from a sermon by Saint Sophronius, bishop:

In honour of the divine mystery that we celebrate today, let us all hasten to meet Christ. Everyone should be eager to join the procession and to carry a light.
Our lighted candles are a sign of the divine splendour of the one who comes to expel the dark shadows of evil and to make the whole universe radiant with the brilliance of his eternal light. Our candles also show how bright our souls should be when we go to meet Christ.
The Mother of God, the most pure Virgin, carried the true light in her arms and brought him to those who lay in darkness. We too should carry a light for all to see and reflect the radiance of the true light as we hasten to meet him.
The light has come and has shone upon a world enveloped in shadows; the Dayspring from on high has visited us and given light to those who lived in darkness. This, then, is our feast, and we join in procession with lighted candles to reveal the light that has shone upon us and the glory that is yet to come to us through him. So let us hasten all together to meet our God.
The true light has come, the light that enlightens every man who is born into this world. Let all of us, my brethren, be enlightened and made radiant by this light. Let all of us share in its splendour, and be so filled with it that no one remains in the darkness. Let us be shining ourselves as we go together to meet and to receive with the aged Simeon the light whose brilliance is eternal. Rejoicing with Simeon, let us sing a hymn of thanksgiving to God, the Father of the light, who sent the true light to dispel the darkness and to give us all a share in his splendour.
Through Simeon’s eyes we too have seen the salvation of God which he prepared for all the nations and revealed as the glory of the new Israel, which is ourselves. As Simeon was released from the bonds of this life when he had seen Christ, so we too were at once freed from our old state of sinfulness.
By faith we too embraced Christ, the salvation of God the Father, as he came to us from Bethlehem. Gentiles before, we have now become the people of God. Our eyes have seen God incarnate, and because we have seen him present among us and have mentally received him into our arms, we are called the new Israel. Never shall we forget this presence; every year we keep a feast in his honour.

A man I recently met was a sort of odd and ignorant zen master. (Perfect for the odd and ignorant student.) He used a koan: "What happens to the head that peeks up over the rest of the heads?"
Then he'd mime a hand with mallet banging downward, and laugh.
He taught me something to take along with me in my drifting -- there is no place to stand that is not an open hole, no bridge to cross that does not collapse to the void.

The light of Christ is not a solid rock on which to stand.

The mind of Buddha is not a sturdy bridge carrying you across.

The middle of winter is not a destination.

Everything is a place from which to set out from here to elsewhere and return.

This between-place is pilgrimage where light and shadow coincide and converge. As we go on.

In remembrance
After I am gone—

Spring -- hope's eternal faint song -- "baa...baa!"

Molly Ivins died yesterday. Absent one smart and sassy lady.

Congress must work for the people in the resolution of this fiasco. Ted Kennedy's proposal to control the money and tighten oversight is a welcome first step. And if Republicans want to continue to rubber-stamp this administration's idiotic "plans" and go against the will of the people, they should be thrown out as soon as possible, to join their recent colleagues.

Anyone who wants to talk knowledgeably about our Iraq misadventure should pick up Rajiv Chandrasekaran's "Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq's Green Zone." It's like reading a horror novel. You just want to put your face down and moan: How could we have let this happen? How could we have been so stupid?
(from final column of Molly Ivins, "Stand Up Against the Surge." Originally Published on Thursday January 11, 2007)

Sadness at losing a vital voice of sanity and truth in a surrounding morass of slick spin and mendacity.

Just come to see that everything is passing on,
That nothing in your mind remains
The same for even the span of a breath.
If you see like that for even a moment,
Then for that moment you are free.
- Ji Aoi Isshi

It seems odd to worry about telling the truth. What is odder still is the inkling that telling the truth is not enough to reveal falsity's ugliness. It seems that falsity is becoming alluring and drop-dead seductive. It is almost the new standard of beauty. We hear, "What a beautiful lie," and, "What a lovely explanation." We approach a time when the man or woman who tells truth to power will no longer be hounded or trashed, but embraced as cute and cuddly associate to the enormous surge of mendacity.

"Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows."
--George Orwell

We are a civilized people. We treasure that thought. Even antagonists and those exposed by our words laud us.

"Molly Ivins was a Texas original. She was loved by her readers and by her many friends, particularly in Central Texas. I respected her convictions, her passionate belief in the power of words, and her ability to turn a phrase.
— President Bush.

We are skilled at deception. We are slightly embarrassed that we have that skill and are not hesitant to use it against almost anyone. Deception, especially for our own benefit, is a prized quality. We're only mildly troubled by cultivating it above revelation. It is a plus to resumes. Prevarication and misdirection are rewarded in a time of antipathy to truth. Or is it that truth has become a liability?

As shield, we are emboldened by the question: "But, what is 'truth'?" We dress the question up with philosophy, advertisements, and scripture -- mock those whose trade is truth, honor those who trade-in truth for expediency. The expedient trumps the ethical in our time. We are left with desolate values.

We are the people who run this country. We are the deciders. And every single day, every single one of us needs to step outside and take some action to help stop this war. Raise hell. Think of something to make the ridiculous look ridiculous. Make our troops know we're for them and trying to get them out of there. Hit the streets to protest Bush's proposed surge. ... We need people in the streets, banging pots and pans and demanding, "Stop it, now!"
(--Molly Ivins, ibidem)

She was funny. Cutting. Willing not to smile or giggle after saying something pointed or scathing.

"In a time of universal deceit - telling the truth is a revolutionary act."
-- George Orwell

In an age when many of our once and former icons of fierce telling become caged pets -- the Fourth Estate, Christianity, University -- Molly Ivins said "No, thank you!" and lived in the wilds of clear independence with those few who are not impressed by the luxuries of being kept.

A reminder for me and you, she saw and spoke clear and true.

Remember when we held that opinion of God?

Reality Itself, (what is called God), has no opinion.

No opinion, beyond interpretation, is truth.

Truth, clear and itself, is smart and sassy -- wonderfully humble.

Thanks, Molly!

There's a phrase going around about continued US involvement in Iraq: "Failure is not an option."

True, it is not an option. It is a fact.

Anthem

The birds they sang
at the break of day
Start again
I heard them say
Don't dwell on what
has passed away
or what is yet to be.
Ah the wars they will
be fought again
The holy dove
She will be caught again
bought and sold
and bought again
the dove is never free.

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in.

We asked for signs
the signs were sent:
the birth betrayed
the marriage spent
Yeah the widowhood
of every government --
signs for all to see.

I can't run no more
with that lawless crowd
while the killers in high places
say their prayers out loud.
But they've summoned, they've summoned up
a thundercloud
and they're going to hear from me.

Ring the bells that still can ring ...

You can add up the parts
but you won't have the sum
You can strike up the march,
there is no drum
Every heart, every heart
to love will come
but like a refugee.

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in.

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in.
That's how the light gets in.
That's how the light gets in.
(--Poem/song by Leonard Cohen)

We might better consider the option of light.

Make light fact.

Raccoon climbs beam to loft when door opens near skin of dessicated fox under metal skiff in abandoned goat barn outskirting St Andrews by Sea, Canada.

The truth of Zen,
Just a little of it,
Is what turns one’s
Life of monotonous,
Commonplace actions,
Into one of art,
Full of genuine inner creativity.
- D.T. Suzuki

Two of us and border collie step through frozen snow on rutted path down to St Croix River over which blows stiff cold wind.

If there were a second act, stage perfectly set presents itself.

Enough the inner script.

At Sunday Evening Practice we read Mair's sermon given at Lincolnville Center Church. She quotes an author speaking about Jesus (God, Spirit) ghosting in and out of presence. Meir does street ministry in Portland Maine.

The seed of mystery lies in muddy water.
How can I perceive this mystery?
Water becomes clear through stillness.
How can I become still?
By flowing with the stream.
- Lao-tze

Jim said it is all about presence. Priscilla spoke about Spirit. Cesco made his toy squeak from front meditation room. Saskia heats Gale's lamb stew.

If God (Spirit, Jesus, Self) is Presence Itself, it occurs to me, then Spirit is always present. Those times we say that Spirit arrives is metaphorical -- when in fact, it is we who show up. Suddenly we come home from mental and emotional traveling absence. Suddenly we see what is there (here) -- reflected through a person, a thing, or a situation.

The spiritual experience so surprising to us is our own presence reflected in the presence of Spirit.

Mair and her partner wander streets looking and listening. So too must we. Each person seen or heard is us. We are looking and listening for our selves.

This is true practice. Some have called it Christian. Some Buddhist. (Place every name of every religion here -- and the practice will be the same -- if it is a true practice.)

How do this practice?

Be real. Be present. Be attentive.

When so, the ghosts of former absences reveal themselves -- and we are rapt with compassion, torn by sorrow, healed by joy -- we are present to the need of Spirit, for us. And our need, for it.

This place -- this ghosting Spirit of real attentive presence -- is a good place without opposite.

Let's meet here!

Not an inch unfrozen. Double brook sounds. Under wood bridge. Under cascading ice.

So too, asking with each crunch step: Who am I? Who are you?

If the eye never sleeps,
All dreams will naturally cease.
If the mind makes no discriminations,
The ten thousand things
Are as they are, of single essence.
To understand the mystery of the One-essence
Is to be released from all entanglements.
When all things are seen equally
The timeless Self-essence is reached.
No comparisons or analogies are possible
In this causeless, relationless state.
- T’sen T’sang (d.606)

No answer. Of course.

Only snowy path. Only old dog. Only creaking wood cold bridge waking. Only fallen shavings hollow tree woodpecker questions.

Ask again.

And again.

Once again.