If we were mindful, would we agree with Nikos Kazantzakis, who wrote in the Prologue to his Report to Greco, that : "God is being built."?

Into a person,
Absolutely free
From thoughts and emotions,
Even the tiger finds no room
To insert its fierce claws.
- Shinkage-ryu sword school

I don't know why God is feared. Someone has badly imprisoned human imagination.

Our ancestors call out to us in our cells and memories. They are asking us to reconsider our myths, reverse our thinking, and reverence the One from which we come and to which we are to be building. There is now, and always has been, a truer way to dwell and act than that which deception wishes to turned us from. "Way" -- whether as articulated by Christ, or by Lao Tzu -- is our true course.

"Reach what you can, my child."
Your voice was grave and dark, as though iisuing from the deep larynx of the earth.
It reached the roots of my mind, but my heart remained unshaken.
"Grandfather," I called more loudly now, give me a more difficult, more Cretan command."
Hardly had I finished speaking when, all at once, a hissing flame cleaved the air. The indomitable ancestor with the thyme roots tangled in his locks vanished from my sight; a cry was left on Sinai's peak, an upright cry full of command, and the air trembled:
"Reach what you cannot!"
(--p.22, in Report to Greco, by Nikos Kazantzakis, c.1965)

To reach what "I" cannot requires "you" and "you" and "you," "Our" father/mother, our ancestors and guardian angels, our deepest longings and most sacred instincts -- all collate and collaborate together to awaken our attention.

In the United States today is Memorial Day. For us it is a time to honor and pray for all those dead and deadened by war. So many have died. So many have been deadened.

God is the most resplendent face of despair, the most resplendent face of hope. You are pushing me beyond hope and despair, grandfather, beyond the age-old frontiers. Where? I gaze around me, I gaze inside me.Virtue has gone mad, geometry and matter have gone mad.The law-giving mind must come again to establish a new order, new laws.The world must become a richer harmony.
(--p.22, Kazantzakis)

This is the day following Pentecost. Something happened that day...long ago. Was it an intimation of a "richer harmony" beyond hope and despair?

I belong to this longing for a richer harmony. And I long to follow this "Way" with all who are willing to accept the gift of being "friend" one to another. If this is "church' -- then I am a church-dweller. Church is the doing of what we are. Are we friends on the way to a more subtle, richer harmony?

They have set their mouth in the heavens,
and their tongue traverses the earth.
Thus they sit in their lofty positions,
and the flood-waters cannot reach them.
They ask, “How can God know?
Does the Most High have any understanding?”
Behold, then, the wicked, always prosperous:
their riches growing for ever.
(from Ps. 72, Office of Readings)

Many of us do not attend church any longer. Not even those who show up at church on Saturdays or Sundays are assured they are attending church. Church is the doing of what we are. If we are not engaging (with body, heart, or mind) all our brothers and sisters, near or far -- we are not attending church.

Mindfulness is today's church without and beyond walls.

Mindfulness is present-time awareness. It takes place in the here and now. It is the observance of what is happening right now, in the present moment. It stays forever in the present, perpetually on the crest of the ongoing wave of passing time.

If you are remembering your second-grade teacher, that is memory. When you then become aware that you are remembering your second-grade teacher, that is mindfulness. If you then conceptualize that process and say to yourself, "Oh, I am remembering," that is thinking.
(-Henepola Gunaratana, Mindfulness in Plain English)

If we are willing to practice mindfulness, we are being built as God is being built.

The priest in Belfast mentioned the "Way" Jesus spoke of, and the "friends" he spoke with.

1 When the time for Pentecost was fulfilled, they were all in one place together.
(--Acts 2)

Perhaps "church" is the practice of being "all in one place together." (Not a building; not an institution; not even a denomination.) When we attend one another wholeheartedly, we are in the "place" of the "way" of "friends."

All of them look to you
to give them their food when they need it.
You give it to them, and they gather;
you open your hand, they are filled with good things.
But turn away, and they are dismayed;
take away their breath, and they die,
once more they will turn into dust.
You will send forth your breath, they will come to life;
you will renew the face of the earth.
(--from Psalm 104)

We will come to life.

With. One. Breath.

As is the way of friends.

Seeing things through.

Together.

We are you.

What is this Holy Spirit?

The question clear,
The answer deep,
Each particle,
Each instant a reality,
A bird call shrills
Through mountain dawn:
Look where the old
Master sits, a rock, in Zen.

- Sodo (1841-1920)

The other night, somewhere between 1:00am and 3:30am two owls called back and forth to each other in the valley echo of Ragged and Bald Mountains. Their five pointed sequence went on through dozing off and waking up.

26. But the Counselor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you.
(-- John 14:26; New International Version)

We need to be re-minded.

Everything has been said -- all at once, all of a piece. It has been a very long time since this existence was spoken-into-being. The sounds of being -- words, vowels, and consonants -- are still making their way through space/time to our eyes and ears.

To be spoken-into-being is the fact of human life. It is a continual reverberation.

If the Holy Spirit is the constant and continual reverberation of creative inspiration, we are pleased to pray for, to, and with the Holy Spirit. We are the corresponding echo of belonging.

We belong in silence.

Breathing into and being breathed upon.

A lovely silence of belonging.

We belong in silence.

All the places we're not.

One minute of sitting, one inch of Buddha.
Like lightning all thoughts come and pass.
Just once look into your mind-depths:
Nothing else has ever been.
- Manzan (1635-1714)

We spoke about the film Into Great Silence (Die Grosse Stille).

Dee said, "They didn't smile." Ananur said, "They were so secure."

They were so secure, maybe they didn't have to smile.

All the places we're not, love can only be.

Love can only be where we are not.

Tell me: Where is God not?

If we disappear, that is, if our self-centered ego dissolves into mere and clear presence, will God be realized?

Forget security.

Honor your work.

Smile.

We are exiles from our true home.

This affair is like the bright sun in the blue sky, shining clearly, changeless and motionless, without diminishing or increasing. It shines everywhere in the daily activities of everyone, appearing in everything. Though you try to grasp it, you cannot get it; though you try to abandon it, it always remains. It is vast and unobstructed, utterly empty. Like a gourd floating on water, it cannot be reined in or held down. Since ancient times, when good people of the Path have attained this, they’ve appeared and disappeared in the sea of birth and death, able to use it fully. There is no deficit or surplus: like cutting up sandalwood, each piece is it.
(- Letter to Hsu Tun-chi from Zen Master Ta Hui)

Becoming an exile is necessary. Home is not in a single place. We must constantly leave home to happen upon home as it reveals itself to us.

Body Found in Iraq Is California Soldier,
By JEREMIAH MARQUEZ
Associated Press Writer

Posted: Today at 9:03 p.m. Updated: 29 minutes ago

TORRANCE, Calif. — The body of a U.S. soldier found in the Euphrates River in Iraq was identified Wednesday as a California man who was abducted with two comrades a week and a half ago, a relative said.

What did we expect? War murders men, women, and children. People who are deluded by security will not hear the cries of exiles.

We are spiritual exiles.

God is not in a single place.

We must leave God and family to happen upon God and family.

I sorrow for God found dead in the Euphrates River. I sorrow for the California man whose body washed up on shore. I pray for him, his family. I pray for God. It is a mystery

In Iraq, each soldier is it. Each civilian is it. You are it.

Exiles.

Face it.

Cheryl said, "Even in grief, joy."

Others said, "Even in anger, joy." Even in depression, joy."

Followers of the Way, do not be deceived by teachers who everywhere say “I know Zen, I understand the Way,” and who endlessly deliver discussions like mountain torrents. All this is action that produces hellish Karma. If one is a true learner of the Way, one does not search for the faults of the world, but rather speedily applies oneself to attain genuine insight. If one only can see with perfect clarity, then all is completed.
- Rinzai (d. 866)

Maybe joy is appreciating that what is taking place is, indeed, taking place.

Joy is completely being-with what is taking place.

Earlier in the shop, before conversation, someone spontaneously called for a resolution of impeachment of the president and vice president. By swift and sudden parliamentary maneuver, a motion was made, seconded, and voted on. Outside, Jeffrey measured the pulpit for a new set of beams, Richard fastened hooks for a diminished number of dinghy lines, and Thomas complained that the code for a fence he had to construct around his gallery's roof sculpture garden was stricter than the restaurant's there at the harbor.

I'm not sure anyone recorded the vote inside the shop, or whether there is any mechanism to implement what was decided. One man voted with his back to the proceedings.

It was a typical lovely sunny Tuesday at the harbour. I'm not sure anyone really wants impeachment. It would be so embarrassing.

"Even in embarrassment, joy," says someone without opening her mouth, without counting today's dead in Iraq.

I don't always follow my breath. Sometimes it leads me through body pain. I'd rather fall asleep. Sometimes my breath says: "Don't mind me; I'm just passing through."

In seated meditation, with one's back straight, one is enjoined to breathe naturally but deeply, intentionally and slowly, so that the breathing is centered on the lower diaphragm. One thus becomes aware that it is the whole body, not just the lungs, that participates, or rather, partakes, in the breathing. And as one becomes more and more familiarized with this way of breathing while doing zazen, this way of real-izing one's connectedness with the breath flows into what one does after zazen. One finds oneself breathing more easily and with a greater sense of relaxation and satisfaction.
This process of familiarization with the breath is what we experience as we go on in our practice: the connection between our zazen and the rest of our daily life, taking the fourfold posture given above, gyo-zen, or Zen in action, ju-zen, or Zen in passivity or relaxation, and ga-zen, or Zen in horizontal position, that is, even while one is asleep, in addition to zazen, comes to be realized more and more.
(--from Rediscovering the Breath, by Ruben Habito; Excerpted from Healing Breath, Orbis Books)

These last few days we've been coughing and trying not to speak or breathe. We take walks with Cesco along Ragged bottom to Hosmer Pond, the three of us slow and variously failing. Something has grabbed us and shaken us wobbly.

Each moment, death is possible. It's the price of birth. It's the payment at the end of the check-out line. After a life spent shopping for -- whatever -- love, happiness, peace, enlightenment, we have to "check out." It is our debt for all the joys, happiness, ecstasy, and love we've been given throughout our lives. The cost of each life is exactly one death. May all beings get their money's worth!
(--from Zen and Hospice, By Joe Benenate, DO; Maria Kannon Zen Center)

We meet a young Border Collie racing after tennis balls flung up hill. Her name is Annie. She and Cesco greet one another. Annie shares her ball. Her human says she does that with no one. She must be taking compassion on an old failing relative. It is joyful to view the expanse of age and vitality between the 3 year old and the 16 year old working dogs.

It can be dangerous to encounter others’ pain, because it’s tempting to shut it out, not feel it. I’d especially like to shut out the pain -- and therefore the humanity -- of people with whom I disagree – the soldier in the tank, Donald Rumsfeld, suicide bombers.

But the experience of encountering another’s pain can also break through the illusion that we are separate beings. One day during a religious festival in 2004, some people set off bombs that ripped through Shi’a shrines in both Baghdad and Kerbala. I knew that some dear Iraqi friends, including a little girl named Houda whom I especially loved, were at the shrine in Kerbala. I was trapped for awhile at the shrine in Baghdad and could not get to their house until the following day. I practically ran to their home, and when I saw little Houda, surprised both myself and her by bursting into tears.

That is when I realized how much I loved her, that she was my own child. And I realized that every child is my own child – every child is our own, every person our brother or sister, every sentient being, every animal, rock and tree, is part of us. Literally, by blood, by breath. We are each other and we are responsible for each other. If we all woke up to this, wars would disappear because we simply could not hurt each other anymore. Conflict would not disappear, but we’d figure out some other way to solve our problems.
(from Practicing Zen in Iraq, By Sheila Provencher, Maria Kannon Zen Center)

There's a simplicity when illness lays you low.

Attention naturally falls to breath.

Mine.

Yours.

Our.

These will be posted elsewhere on the website. Until then, here's the:
1) Spring/Summer 2007 Events at Meetingbrook, and the
2) Spring/Summer 2007 Hermitage Update

..................................................................

Meetingbrook Dogen & Francis Hermitage Update, Spring/Summer 2007

Theme: And All Is As It Is.

And this, then,

is the vision of that Heaven of which

we have heard, where those who love

each other have forgiven each other,

where, for that, the leaves are green,

the light a music in the air,

and all is unentangled,

and all is undismayed.

(From poem “To My Mother” by Wendell Berry)

Spring comes to Maine. Summer follows. Last patches of snow draw into themselves on northeast side of Ragged Mountain. As usual, the mountain remains itself through ice, wind, and snow -- throughout stays itself as green stretches awake, water seeps from hidden springs, and porcupines wander trails. The more a thing changes the more it remains and becomes itself.

Meetingbrook begins again. We've a new lease at the harbour. The following gatherings take place regularly at the Meetingbrook Hermitage Bookshop/Bakery by the Harbour, and at Meetingbrook Hermitage at Ragged Mountain.

Note: All events at Meetingbrook are free, open, and informal

1. At Harbour Meetingbrook. Evening Conversation Practice at Bookshop/Bakery: Every Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday evening, from 5:30 to 6:30pm there is a formatted conversation on a different theme or focus. Each conversation intends and practices deep-listening and loving-speech. The hour consists of: reading aloud around the circle, brief silence, open conversation, and final circle comments.

Themes of weekly and daily events :

• Tuesdays: Buddhist Meditative Tradition

• Wednesdays: Laura Soul-Friend Conversation -- a circle group inviting each to reflect and speak of their own prayer and practice, what is noticed, and how things are going. (Occasional presenters.)

• Thursdays: Christian Contemplative Tradition

• Fridays: Paths to Peace -- Community Conversation on Interdependence, Eco-spirituality, and Interreligious Dialogue

• Saturdays: Poetry Tea, and Literature (4:30-5:30pm).We read around circle our own writing or pieces of each person's choosing.

• Sundays: Upstairs/Downstairs Community Table (1:00pm-2:30pm.) Whether it is called brunch, barbecue, potluck, or meat-&-potatoes -- a regular Sunday gathering with good food & good company. (Donations of food or money gratefully accepted.)

• Daily: Noon Lectio -- 15 at 12. A regular daily pause for 15 minutes at noon to listen to a reading for 5 minutes, sit in silence for 5 minutes, then have an opportunity to share some personal response (if you wish) in the circle for the remaining 5 minutes.

• Music: Come by any time to practice or rehearse in public. We also have a piano. No one will pay a bit of attention to you. Weds and Sun others are sure to be there with harmonica, guitar, harp, or flute.

• Invitations to Use Patio:

-- Open invitation to use harbour patio for gatherings. Any time, just ask. Our redone patio at the water, with its new large grill and cafe tables, is available for use by the Meetingbrook community for gatherings of family and friends. One requirement: A plate of food must be offered to a stranger passing by. -- Open invitation to use harbour patio for morning Tai Chi, QiQong, or Yoga.

Our harbour patio is quiet and lovely in the mornings, especially from 6:00am-10-00am. If any individual or small group wished to practice/lead meditative movement using our patio, please ask.

…

2. At Mountain Meetingbrook. Practice at Meetingbrook Hermitage at Ragged Mountain:

• Saturday Ora et Labora Practice (7:15am-9:15am). Beginning with a silent sitting, chanting, and walking meditation – we then (after coffee/tea and toasted English with jam taken in silence with periodic audio tape background) do a period of work around grounds of hermitage in mindfulness.

• Sunday Evening Practice. Two hour meditation practice consisting of: 35 minute sitting, 10 minute walking, chanting (of Heart Sutra or Compline), then: reading at table, silent mindful eating of soup & bread, then circle conversation/reflection.

…

3. Hermitage Harbour Room. Upstairs over bookshop/bakery is a lovely studio apartment. This single room with balcony overlooks our patio and the harbour with all the boating bustling that takes place there. This room is available for brief retreats, overnight stays, or day solitude visits. Call and ask us to reserve it for you. We operate by donations, and are grateful for whatever dollar amount you are willing to leave as donation for the ongoing work of the hermitage.

When not occupied by guests, the Harbour Room is available to everyone for quiet time, one-with-one conversations, meetings for up to 12 people, reading, or simply looking out over the water.

…

4. Meetingbrook and Maine State Prison. Meetingbrook volunteers weekly at the State Prison in Warren. We hold Meetingbrook Conversations (MC's) and Individual Learning Conversations (ILC's) with attendees from general population. We are also embarking on MC's and ILC's in the closed unit protective custody. Also held will be ILC's in the Special Management Unit (formerly known as the Super-Max). Friday mornings are dedicated to these lovely encounters.

…

5. Ongoing Life at Meetingbrook. Masquerading as a mildly mannered (sometimes cranky gathering place of irregulars) bookshop and bakery at Camden Harbor, Meetingbrook Hermitage is a place of collation and recollection, hospitality and inquiry, acceptance and forgiveness, good conversation and better baked goods, not to mention the best and quietest sitting place on the water where coffee, tea, and hot chocolate are always on the house.

The harbour location is the market-face of Meetingbrook Hermitage. We often think of ourselves as hermits-in-the-open. The promises we take are Contemplation, Conversation, and Correspondence. There are no secret handshakes nor special qualifications to belong at Meetingbrook -- everyone who walks into view or is heard saying a word, or who thinks of us and others with engaged consideration -- everyone belongs.

…

6. Money. We are small and we are not independently wealthy. Therefore we need, ask for, and accept donations to fund Meetingbrook. The bookshop/bakery is a labor of love, it does not pay for itself, therefore. we ask for help to continue its operation i.e. for rent and utilities. We ask you to donate whatever you can, whenever you might be able. Saskia and Bill have part-time employment to help stay afloat. We are blessed with volunteers and board members who help run the place and keep us in our place. Everyone involved receives a yearly salary of a penny and a pizza for their efforts.

...

• Subscriptions: We invite you to become subscribers.

Subscriptions of $50.00 dollars or more a year earns you our gratitude and a 10% discount a year on all books and music.

Subscriptions of $250.00 in a year and you receive our gratitude, 15% discount, and one night in the Harbour Room.

Subscriptions of $500.00 a year, and you receive our gratitude, a 20% discount on all books and music for the year, as well as two overnight stays in the harbour room with morning breakfast.

Any gift subscription of $1,000 dollars or more receives all the above -- and -- we will loan you our dog and cat for a weekend, ignore you when we see you, and not tell anyone of your kindness.

...

• New Economic Template: Curiously, we would actually like to operate the bookshop/bakery on a new economic basis, namely, by donation. Items such as used and sale books, not-today baked goods, previously owned music cds, as well as soups, sandwiches -- would be exchanged on the basis of whatever the individual could pay or wishes to donate to the hermitage. (We've done this already with tea, coffee, and hot chocolate since 1996. Since last year the practice extends to sandwiches and Sunday Community Table, patio-grill food-stuff, and several other goodies).

We have tea pots around upstairs and downstairs for donations to help us pay the rent etc and purchase food for all the hospitality gatherings where we are pleased to offer food and drink gratis. We like both the idea and the practice of what a philosopher once said, namely, “Life is gift, not recompense.” We slowly mull, meditate, and little by little implement this notion of gift-for-gift economy. We daily recognize that everything -- all of it -- is gift.

...

• Please consider donating to Meetingbrook. Tell us about Grants or Foundations that might be friendly to peace, hospitality, tolerance, community engagement, or just plain nice folks who like the idea of what we've been praying, meditating, and engaging these past years as we begin our 12th year at the harbour.

...

• Sails: Everybody gets to go sailing with Saskia on Penobscot Bay. That's a given. Even without asking. You might just be shanghaied by her. Keep your wits about you.

• Some final words: We have called ourselves mono, that is, monastics of no other. We intend a life of prayer and mindfulness, practicing between traditions what the designation mono stands for. It stands for the gift given all creation and existence -- the gift of wholeness -- a gift very often not seen, heard, or understood.

We feel called. We do our life and this practice of mindful service with the realization that each person is gift, and each invitation to love and serve one/an/other is gift. We are each of us invited to dwell within a true dwelling place.

Some hold that true dwelling place to be What Is Itself...or...God. Our focus as meetingbrook monastics includes both expressions -- namely, Buddha-Mind and Christ-Consciousness. Some do not use the word God but nevertheless long for What Is Itself. However it is worded for you, we feel this reality to be no other. Hence: monastics of no other

For us, Meetingbrook Dogen & Francis Hermitage is a place where each is invited to presence herself or himself. What is no other to us is gift. What Buddhists call Bodhichitta, (unconditional loving-kindness and compassion), and Christians call Agape, (love that promotes overall well-being, the self-sacrificing love of God for humanity, and humanity for one another as well as God) -- is what we attempt to practice, engage, and embody. (The Bodhisattva vow to save all beings, and a Cosmotheandric spirituality which is all-inclusive, are both ways that are Vorbild (i.e. the pattern before us) and Schwer (i.e. difficult). Still, humbly, we practice.

Meetingbrook is a Schola Gratiae et Contemplationis, (that is, a School of Gratefulness and Contemplation). It is a daily practice. It is hospitality. It is an integral conversation between silence and word. It is an engaged interaction with all our brothers and sisters. It looks to, and listens for, all sentient beings. It quietly and reverently seeks to attend the source mystery of life. This source mystery of life is what some call God, and some call What Is Taking Place, Here, Now! We try to pay attention to how each person and being expresses their view. We trust in inclusive sharing of each path, each trail along that path, each step on the trail. This is what a Laura of Hermits is for us -- It is a common viewing of each trail and each pathway leading each of us home.

In conclusion: We are grateful for all the blessings and wonderful folks we've been privileged to meet these dozen years. Come visit. Grace us with your presence. You are integrally within the sound of what is taking place. We listen for you. Let's listen together!

What else is there?

Just you.

Just us.

Just everyone.

And all of it.

As it is!

With love,

, Cesco , Mu-ge ,
and all who grace Meetingbrook,
5 May 2007

(In memoriam, Katherine)

................................................................................



Spring & Summer 2007 Events at Meetingbrook

All Events at MEETINGBROOK are free, open, & informal
Meetingbrook is a Place of Conversation, Collation, and Recollection
at Camden Harbour and at Ragged Mountain
Consult “Today at Meetingbrook”For any changes in schedule.

CONVERSATIONS AT BOOKSHOP/BAKERY HERMITAGE ON THE HARBOUR
Note: All conversations are 1 hour in length. Anyone invited to drop in. We practice loving speech, deep listening, and honest inquiry. Format: circle reading; brief silence; conversing; final circle comments.

TUESDAY EVENING CONVERSATION AT BOOKSHOP 5:30pm-6:30pm
Theme - Maybe Zen, Maybe Not. A Practice/Study focusing on Buddhism and its meditative tradition. A brief silent sitting, brief reading, and conversation. Currently: No Time To Lose, by Pema Chodron.

WEDNESDAY EVENING CONVERSATION AT BOOKSHOP 5:30pm. -6:30pm
Theme - Laura Soul-Friend Conversation. A conversation focusing on personal practice, experience, and belief. (A “Laura” is the Greek word for “trails” or “ various paths.”) Primary focus is the invitation to reflect and speak aloud where our practice is, what delights and/or difficulties we experience. Each Wednesday some person, or some aspect of practice, will begin the conversation.

THURSDAY EVENING CONVERSATION AT BOOKSHOP 5:30pm-6:30pm.
Theme - Stepping into the Mirror, A Practice/Study focusing on Christianity -- whether traditional, radical, alternative, contemplative, or contemporary. Brief silence, followed by relevant reading, conversation. Currently: A Course in Miracles.

FRIDAY EVENING CONVERSATION AT BOOKSHOP 5:30pm-6:30pm
Theme -- Paths to Peace -- Community Conversation on Interdependence, Eco-spirituality, and Interreligious Dialogue. A look at how contemporary topics affect the many and various everyday concerns --whether religious/spiritual traditions, earth, or the world. Reading, presentation, or film/audio considering topics on themes from all traditions. Currently Anam Cara, by John O'Donohue. Next, Beauty. Films and videos interspersed.

SATURDAY AFTERNOON CONVERSATION AT BOOKSHOP -- 4:30pm-5:30pm
Theme - Tea, Poetry, and Literature. For one hour we’ll read poems, prose pieces, essays, or short stories. Bring with you anything you wish to read -- your ow writing, or others'.

DAILY NOON LECTIO AT BOOKSHOP --Noon -12:15pm (Tue-Sat) Theme-- 15 at 12. A 15 minute mid-day practice in harbour room. A regular daily pause for 15 minutes at noon consisting of: listening to a reading for 5 minutes, sitting in silence for 5 minutes, then having an opportunity to share some personal response in a circle go-round for the remaining 5 minutes.

OTHER EVENTS AT THE HARBOUR

SUNDAY UPSTAIRS/DOWNSTAIRS COMMUNITY TABLE 1:00PM –2:30PM
Upstairs/Downstairs Community Table: Whether it is called brunch, barbecue, potluck, or meat-&-potatoes -- a regular Sunday gathering with good food & good company. (Donations of food or money gratefully accepted.)Music, conversation, laughter, and superb Sunday dinner. Stop by! Donations accepted for food!

MUSIC REHEARSALS -- 1:00pm-3:00pm (approx)
Any time any day of week. On Wednesday and Sunday afternoon a group might gather.. We've a piano. Come rehearse, or play in public. No one will pay any attention to you. (Unless you wish so.)

OPEN INVITATION TO USE HARBOUR PATIO FOR GATHERINGS --Anytime, just ask. Our redone patio at the water, with its new large grill and cafe tables, is available for use by the Meetingbrook community for gatherings of family and friends. One requirement: A plate of food must be offered to a stranger passing by.

MORNING TAI CHI, QiQONG (CHI KUNG), OR YOGA -- OPEN INVITATION FOR SMALL GROUPS. Our harbour patio is quiet and lovely in the mornings, especially from 6:30am-10-00am. If any individual or small group wished to practice/lead meditative movement using our patio, please ask.

MEETINGBROOK EVENTS AT MAINE STATE PRISON, WARREN ME

FRIDAY MORNING PRISON CONVERSATIONS -- 7:15am --11:15am.
Weekly Meetingbrook Conversations, group and individual, open to all inmates.

HERMITAGE EVENTS AT BARNESTOWN RD, RAGGED MOUNTAIN

HERMITAGE CHAPEL/ZENDO MEDITATION CABIN -- An Open Daily Community resource The Chapel/Zendo Meditation Cabin is always open and available for silence, meditation, or prayer. Whatever your tradition, let us remember one another whenever we sit.

SATURDAY ORA ET LABORA PRACTICE -- 7:15am-9:15am. Prayer and Work. Beginning with a silent sitting, chanting, and walking meditation. We then (after coffee/tea, English Muffins with jam, taken in silence) do a brief period of work in mindfulness around grounds of hermitage.

SUNDAY EVENING PRACTICE AT THE HERMITAGE -- 6:00pm-8:00pm
Each Sunday evening, drop-in. Practice includes: Sitting (40min), Walking, (10min), Chanting, Table reading (10min), Silent Eating (10min), Conversing (20min). Bell. Leave.

Closed Mondays.
Open Tuesday-Saturday 10:00am to 8:00pm, Sunday 10:00am to 4:30pm
Let us order your books and music! Thanks!
Bookshop/Bakery, 50 Bayview Street, Camden, ME
Dogen & Francis Hermitage 64 Barnestown Rd, Camden, ME
mono@meetingbrook.org (207) 236-6808 or (207) 701-9644

Spurs beat Suns.

The semi-graveyard of men -- who muscle their way past each other, throw a ball or decree downward through a hoop, kick and swing elbows at opposing players in vintage gangster bland visage "What?, Me?" surprise -- is no longer interesting.

From Bush/Cheney to Horry/Bowen, the law of enforcers is game's gangster rule. The game has moved on from whatever it was and changed into whatever it is. Big-body stop-signs, and crushing slam-dunks, carnival shots from one inch to full court away and consultant scripted comments post-game -- and what was once a childhood sport is what everything becomes. From basketball to war -- it all becomes business. Big and boisterous, deadly and dismal -- business

But this is not about basketball, is it? Athletics and politics wear the same uniform. It's not so much anymore about the good of all, the greater good. Its about individual skills, individual power, and individual wealth. It's more about not caring about opposing views or players. The motto on locker doors and government clearance badges is the same: "I want what I want, and I've got the money and power to get it -- the rest of you be damned."

Casualties in Iraq
The Human Cost of Occupation
Edited by Margaret Griffis :: Contact
American Military Casualties in Iraq

American Deaths : Date, Total, In Combat
Since war began (3/19/03): 3409, 2799
Since "Mission Accomplished" (5/1/03) (the list): 3270, 2691
Since Capture of Saddam (12/13/03): 2948, 2493
Since Handover (6/29/04): 2550, 2166
Since Election (1/31/05): 1972, 1903

American Wounded Official Estimated
Total Wounded: 25378, 23000 - 100000
Latest Fatality May 19, 2007
Page last updated 05/18/07 11:58 pm EDT

Other Coalition Troops
274

US Military Deaths - Afghanistan
390

American Civilian Casualties
Sources: DoD, CentCom, MNF, and iCasualties.org

Iraqi Body Counts:
Reported Minimum
63929
Reported Maximum
70023

(from http://antiwar.com/casualties/)

If we dare, try thinking about each one of the men and women and families enumerated above.

Though I think not
To think about it,
I do think about it
And shed tears
Thinking about it.
(--Ryokan)

There are those who say, "Give up naivety. This is the way of the world." The sullen version of existence is dog-eat-dog, no-prisoners-taken, each-man-for-himself.

Are there other versions?

When mortals are alive, they worry about death.
When they're full, they worry about hunger.
Theirs is the Great Uncertainty.

But sages don't consider the past.
And they don't worry about the future.
Nor do they cling to the present.
And from moment to moment they follow the Way.
(--Bodhidharma)

What is the Way?

Does the question interest?

What is the Way.

Does the response interest?

Summer grasses:
all that remains of great soldiers’
imperial dreams
(--Basho)

Let's turn the gangster's credo upside down, and say: "It's not business; it's only personal. Intimate, real, and personal! "

Way will open!

So...we pray.

Frontline's 90 minutes of "Hand of God", first aired January 16, 2007, was watched tonight. More than 10,000 children reportedly were sexually abused by Catholic priests in the United States. Filmmaker Joe Cultrera tells the story of his brother Paul and their family. He tells the story of the priests and bishops involved in either the sexual abuse or the cover-up.

One thing about truth -- it will (we suspect) always come out and show itself. It's not a pretty picture of the men in power and the diminished trust of them.

We shield our heart with an armor woven out of very old habits of pushing away pain and grasping at pleasure. When we begin to breathe in the pain instead of pushing it away, we begin to open our hearts to what's unwanted. When we relate directly in this way to the unwanted areas of our lives, the airless room of ego begins to be ventilated.
(--Pema Chödrön, Start Where You Are)

The days of unquestioning reliance on priests and the church are becoming dim memory. That's a good thing. A shift must take place.

Two people who come into the shop say the old language as well as the structures must be destroyed. Others worry there had best be something to replace what crumbles. Some items on the menu seem a bit airy. We agree that there's more thought needed.

SUCCESS IS COUNTED SWEETEST

SUCCESS is counted sweetest
By those who ne'er succeed.
To comprehend a nectar
Requires sorest need.

Not one of all the purple host
Who took the flag to-day
Can tell the definition,
So clear, of victory,

As he, defeated, dying,
On whose forbidden ear
The distant strains of triumph
Break, agonized and clear.
(--Poem by Emily Dickinson, 1830-1886)

Whenever I am able to stop in at church, I am a back stander, or last row sitter. I do this at lectures and museums also, even at the Trappist monastery when on retreat. As a catholic Buddhist -- (a designation a zen master Jesuit priest theologian once winced at when I told him Cynthia's self-proclamation claim at John Nickerson's memorial)-- I have found a quiet place wherein to dwell during the collapse. And collapse it must.

Walls and words must collapse into open breath and still, silent gaze. And breath and gaze must morph into an engaged presence. This presence first listens. Then, it remains without advice as the speaker attempts to hear themselves through an engaged quiet presence.

The American philosopher Ken Wilber says: "transcend and include."

Tonight it rains in Maine. It has so for three days.

Each is given their life to investigate.

Invisibility is the translucence of Light-Itself, as itself, having no object. In this existence we do not see heaven, it is being created and recognized in every act, each face, and whatever sound of healing prayer pronounced for one another.

In the story, Jesus, 40 days after the 3rd day following his death, entered invisibility. The Christian metaphor is Ascension. The 3rd day was Resurrection. His day of death is known as Good Friday. Jesus, for some, is an object of devotion. For others, he is the reality in whom, through whom, and with whom the invisibility of Life-with-the-Father/Mother takes temporary residence in this world of isomorphic physicality/spirituality.

The ordinary expression is "heaven on earth."

The names we employ ("heaven" and "earth") are expedient means and methods of achieving a particular end. That end is no-end. No-end is the name we loan to invisibility and heaven and all the additional words we associate with the divine, the sacred, the ineffable, and the hierophanic.

The word "hierophany" derives from The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion by Mircea Eliade. This word etymologically breaks down into "hiero" (meaning "sacred") and "-phany" (meaning "manifestation" or "appearance"). Eliade defines a hierophany when he writes: "Man becomes aware of the sacred because it manifests itself, shows itself, as something wholly different from the profane. To designate the act of manifestation of the sacred, we have proposed the term hierophany. It is a fitting term, because it does not imply anything further; it expresses no more than is implicit in its etymological content, i.e., that something sacred shows itself to us. [. . .] In each case we are confronted by the same mysterious act—the manifestation of something of a wholly different order, a reality that does not belong to our world, in objects that are an integral part of our natural ‘profane’ world.”
http://www.cwrl.utexas.edu/~howard/314lspring2005/eliade.htm)

What is your name? What is my name? Are they two? Or one?

A Twice Named Family

I come
from a family
that twice names

its own.
One name
for the world.

One name
for home.
Lydi, Joely, Door,

Bud, Bobby, Bea,
Puddin, Cluster, Lindy,
Money, Duddy, Vess.

Yes,
we are
a two-named family

cause somebody
way back knew
you needed a name

to cook chitlins in.
A name
to put your feet up in.

A name
that couldn't be
fired.

A name
that couldn't be
denied a loan.

A name
that couldn't be
asked

to go
through anyone's
back door.

Somebody way back
knew we needed names
to be loved in.
(--Poem: "A Twice Named Family" by Traci Dant. In Writer's Almalac)

Today, on the Feast of Ascension, it is not seemly to bring up a controversy sparked by the leader of the Roman Catholic church -- one that seems to try to eliminate one name associated with its history -- that name, oppression, or perhaps, conquering coercion.

Brazil Indigenous Groups Fault Pope Talk

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS, Published: May 15, 2007, Filed at 11:25 a.m. ET

SAO PAULO, Brazil (AP) -- Indian rights groups are criticizing Pope Benedict XVI for insisting that Latin American Indians wanted to become Christian before European conquerors arrived centuries ago.

The pope said Sunday that pre-Columbian people of Latin America and the Caribbean were seeking Christ without realizing it. ''Christ is the savior for whom they were silently longing,'' Benedict told a regional conference of bishops in Brazil.

But Paulo Suess, an adviser to Brazil's Indian Missionary Council, said Monday that the comments fail to account for the fact that Indians were enslaved and killed by the Portuguese and Spanish settlers who forced them to become Catholic.

Benedict ''is a good theologian, but it seems he missed some history classes,'' said Suess, whose council is supported by the Roman Catholic Church.

The pope told the bishops that, ''the proclamation of Jesus and of his Gospel did not at any point involve an alienation of the pre-Columbus cultures, nor was it the imposition of a foreign culture.''

But Marcio Meira, who is in charge of Brazil's federal Indian Bureau, said Indians were forced to convert to Catholicism as the result of a ''colonial process.''

''As an anthropologist and a historian I feel obliged to say that, yes, in the past 500 years there was an imposition of the Catholic religion on the indigenous people,'' Meira said.

The Vietnamese Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh wrote a poem entitled "Call Me By My True Names." It is a strong, stark, and necessary poem.

Call Me by My True Names

Do not say that I'll depart tomorrow
because even today I still arrive.

Look deeply: I arrive in every second
to be a bud on a spring branch,
to be a tiny bird, with wings still fragile,
learning to sing in my new nest,
to be a caterpillar in the heart of a flower,
to be a jewel hiding itself in a stone.

I still arrive, in order to laugh and to cry,
in order to fear and to hope.
The rhythm of my heart is the birth and
death of all that are alive.

I am the mayfly metamorphosing on the surface of the river,
and I am the bird which, when spring comes, arrives in time
to eat the mayfly.

I am the frog swimming happily in the clear pond,
and I am also the grass-snake who, approaching in silence,
feeds itself on the frog.

I am the child in Uganda, all skin and bones,
my legs as thin as bamboo sticks,
and I am the arms merchant, selling deadly weapons to
Uganda.

I am the twelve-year-old girl, refugee on a small boat,
who throws herself into the ocean after being raped by a sea
pirate,
and I am the pirate, my heart not yet capable of seeing and
loving.

I am a member of the politburo, with plenty of power in my
hands,
and I am the man who has to pay his "debt of blood" to, my
people,
dying slowly in a forced labor camp.

My joy is like spring, so warm it makes flowers bloom in all
walks of life.
My pain if like a river of tears, so full it fills the four oceans.

Please call me by my true names,
so I can hear all my cries and laughs at once,
so I can see that my joy and pain are one.

Please call me by my true names,
so I can wake up,
and so the door of my heart can be left open,
the door of compassion.
(--Poem by Thich Nhat Hanh)

The door of compassion does not discriminate. Everyone is welcomed through it. The human mind, ashamed of all that it discriminates against, all that it excludes and rewrites in the name of self-preservation, has a silent longing for truth.

Ascension calls for truth.

To be invisible is to be completely at home with the whole of experience.

So, we inquire, we practice awareness, we engage experience, we attempt to give ourselves to consciousness as it reveals us to all and all to us.

No need to look for Jesus.

Dwell well within one's own name.

Each one.

Let's posit this: If things are exactly what they are, there is no same or different. Each thing is what it is. Each person is what he or she is.

Clouds appear
and bring to men a chance to rest
from looking at the moon.
(--Poem by Matsuo Basho, 1644-1694)

So, we ask: What is it? We ask: What is he? or, What is she?

Here's my thought: If only the real is interesting, if only the real is true -- then, the constant inquiry "What is it?" can drop the question mark, and become a declarative or imperative -- namely, "What is it." or, "What-is it!"

To "What is" something is to recognize its reality. To "What-is" a person is to appreciate their reality. "What is" is true.

"What is" transcends "seems to be." "What is" includes seeming, or appearance -- yet continues the inquiry (What is this?) until all story and excuse, blame or praise falls away into the dust-bin of narrative and there remains only what is in itself.

"What is in itself" is real. Ask it: "Are you what is there?" "Are you the one who is to come, or should we expect another?" (These are useful questions!) The only truthful answers to these questions are: "Yes!" and "Yes!"

Silence

My father used to say,
"Superior people never make long visits,
have to be shown Longfellow's grave
nor the glass flowers at Harvard.
Self reliant like the cat --
that takes its prey to privacy,
the mouse's limp tail hanging like a shoelace from its mouth --
they sometimes enjoy solitude,
and can be robbed of speech
by speech which has delighted them.
The deepest feeling always shows itself in silence;
not in silence, but restraint."
Nor was he insincere in saying, "`Make my house your inn'."
Inns are not residences.
(--Poem by Marianne Moore)

Jory brought in Adyashanti for Laura Conversation.

None of the above can be blamed on either of them. I opened the door to an inn and put my bags down for a while.

Now I'm going home.

Home shows itself in silence.

Still, I ask, arriving: "What is it?"

And
hear
the
empty
new
moon
through
raindrop
.
.
.
s.

A man wants to save another man from what he considers to be an injustice perpetrated by people in very influential and powerful position. He is passionate and intense in his suspicions and imaginative assessment of the other man's situation.

What's madness but nobility of soul
At odds with circumstance?
(--from poem "In a Dark Time" by Theodore Roethke)

Perhaps much of life is an unwritten poem a poet has conceived but might not take to terms.

Various quotes from On Poetry and Craft: Selected Prose of Theodore Roethke
by Theodore Roethke

The poem, even a short time after being written,
seems no miracle; unwritten, it seems
something beyond the capacity of the gods.

*
Art is the means we have of undoing the damage of
haste. It's what everything else isn't.

*
You can't make poetry simply by avoiding clichés.

*
There's a point where plainness is no longer a virtue,
when it becomes excessively bald, wrenched.

*
You must believe: a poem is a holy thing -- a good poem,
that is.
(--From On Poetry and Craft: Selected Prose of Theodore Roethke; reprinted by permission of Copper Canyon Press. Copyright © 2000. Poets.org)

Maybe everyone is a poem on the verge of being revealed.

What's verse but nobody's business inhabiting another's form for a brief duration of excited spiration?

Nobody's listening.

What we hear is quite beyond our capacity to fit into intelligible thought.

We'll have to wait on poets to reveal the world to the rest of us unsuspecting dolts.

I, for one, am stupid.

It's a curiosity.

To be.

So.

Stunned.

For: One is stunning.

I'm just off to the side. Just in from the outside. Barely there in the back. When lots are drawn, I remain in hand.

Having nominated two candidates, Joseph known as Barsabbas, whose surname was Justus, and Matthias, they prayed, ‘Lord, you can read everyone’s heart; show us therefore which of these two you have chosen to take over this ministry and apostolate, which Judas abandoned to go to his proper place’. They then drew lots for them, and as the lot fell to Matthias, he was listed as one of the twelve apostles.
(--from Acts 1: 15-26)

Call me Barsabbas.

All day long people
Repeat the word prajna aloud,
But do not know their
Self-natured prajna.
They are like one who
Cannot satisfy their hunger
By only talking about eating.
Just talking of voidness
Will not enable one to
Perceive one’s nature for
Myriads of eons, and there
Will be no advantage in the end.
- Altar Sutra

At times, it is enough to draw lots, an object used as a counter in determining a question by chance. As chance would have it -- (something that happens unpredictably without discernible human intention or observable cause) -- things are the way they are. Some find themselves in the throes of war in foreign lands; others are outside the picket fence, passing by, tourists to terror happening just away from their harms.

'...in the desire to put an end to suffering, one should develop understanding' (Santideva)

The sixth of the six perfections (paramitas) on the Bodhisattva path is wisdom or understanding, panna (Pali) or prajna (Sanskrit). Such wisdom, however, does not refer to mere intellectual understanding but to a direct, experiential insight into the true nature of reality: 'Wisdom is not the same as worldly intelligence. It is possible to have great intelligence but little wisdom' (Geshe Kelsang Gyatso).
(--from About: Buddism; Wisdom (Prajna)

Worldly intelligence says: "Take what you can -- get what you can -- while the getting's good."

Self-natured prajna/wisdom says: "Give it all away -- empty yourself -- there's nothing to hold onto."

XXVII

I’M nobody! Who are you?
Are you nobody, too?
Then there’s a pair of us—don’t tell!
They’d banish us, you know.

How dreary to be somebody!
How public, like a frog
To tell your name the livelong day
To an admiring bog!
(--Poem by Emily Dickinson)

Let's not start a club. Then we won't have to call it: "Nobody too!"

Here's my motto: Ama Nesciri -- Love to be unknown!

I love.

What is.

Unknown.

To be.

One's particular

(Just us.)

Proper place.

Mother- mind.

The fundamental teaching of Buddhism is nothing but the doctrine of One Mind. This Mind is originally perfect and vastly illuminating. It is clear and pure, containing nothing, not even a fine dust. There is neither delusion nor enlightenment, neither birth nor death, neither saints nor sinners. Sentient beings and Buddhas are of the same fundamental nature. There are no two natures to distinguish them. This is why Bodhidharma came from the west to teach the Ch’an method of “direct pointing” to the original true Mind.
- Han-Shan Te-Ch’ing

Attention is mother. Embodied, we say, "Mom!"

No-mind, no-mother.

(Pay attention here.)

I love my mother!

("Mind me!" she'd say.)

No two.

Merely true.

(Thanks Katherine.)

Prayers are needed.

To the White House, Washington DC
Dear Mr. President,
I sorrow the loss of life in Iraq.
I also sorrow the dilemma you are facing in making choices about how to honorably end the awful reality of this war.
Please be assured of my prayers.
Also, carefully attend in wisdom what moral and ethical chaos war engenders.
You have the strength and courage to choose a better course, to cease the torment and pain.
Please choose the higher path -- begin to end the war.
This nation will back you. It's the right thing to do.
I pray for you and the nation and the dead and wounded on both sides of the fighting.
I pray your courage takes the right path.
Your resoluteness can shift to resolve for peace and justice.
Please consider doing so.
Sincerely,
Bill Halpin
Camden Maine

We now end each evening conversation with an additional sentence after thanking the attendees for coming, and the author for his/her words. We say "And let us hold in our hearts our absent brothers and sisters and all who need prayer."

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

Many...no, all...need prayer.

Let's do so for one another.

Here's one.

Praying.

Now.

Gale sends link to a video of a talk given in 1992 by a then 12 year old girl.

Severn Cullis-Suzuki, when she was age 12, traveled from from Vancouver, Canada to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil and addressed the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development. With her repetitive refrain "I am only a child..." said, "If you don't know how to fix it, please stop breaking it." She was founder of ECO (the Environmental Children's Organization). "I'm here to tell you adults, 'You must change your ways'."

Then, concluding her address:

"My father always says "You are what you do, not what you say." Well, what you do makes me cry at night. You grown ups say you love us. I challenge you, please make your actions reflect your words. Thank you for listening."

It is a long and difficult practice, this learning to listen.

Some days it seems that adult humans are very hard of hearing. Maybe this increasing deafness is because so much of what we hear is deafening drivel. Curiously, instead of learning to listen, we are becoming adept as a society in the manipulation of others. We teach persuasion and spin, how to talk over someone else who is speaking, and the paramount skill of pundit and politician -- namely, saying: "Look...!" -- and changing the question, diverting attention from the issue at hand, and rotely enumerating talking points that hammer home the agenda of the speaker.

Discourse, meaningful relational conversation, and authentic debate are fading from our culture -- replaced by derision, dismissal, and denigrating 'talking-at' instead of talking-with.

There's a great need to listen to and hear words that are true and real. Severen's were true and real in 1992. (Listen to them.) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5g8cmWZOX8Q&NR=1

Here are some playful/serious quotes worth listening to aloud:

"Until one has loved an animal, a part of one's soul remains unawakened." ~ Anatole France

"No heaven will not ever heaven be; Unless my cats are there to welcome me." ~ Unknown

"We can judge the heart of a man by his treatment of animals." ~ Immanuel Kant

"An animal's eyes have the power to speak a great language." ~ Martin Buber

"A dog is the only thing on earth that loves you more than you love yourself." - Josh Billings

"The more I see of men, the more I admire dogs." - Jeanne-Marie Roland

"I love cats because I love my home and after a while they become its visible soul." - - Jean Cocteau

"Some people say man is the most dangerous animal on the planet. Obviously those people have never met an angry cat." - - Lillian Johnson

"There are two means of refuge from the misery of life - music and cats." - Albert Schweitzer
--(http://animalkare.tripod.com/id10.html)

Maybe we have to start with the animals. Then plants. Only to arrive, after prolonged practice, at human beings. Start being kind. Then caring. Finally responsible, loving, and even wise to the needs of all living sentient beings.

We could start earlier. We might begin with rocks and stones. We'll gather them, stack them, rake the small ones into patterns pleasing to the eye. We will practice not throwing stones, not using them to hurt one another. We'll build wonderful dwellings of stone and let the trees rest and re-group for a generation. We'll roll the rocks, then rock and roll with the sounds of brook and stream, river and ocean.

We'll begin all over again.

Water

Everything on the earth bristled, the bramble
pricked and the green thread
nibbled away, the petal fell, falling
until the only flower was the falling itself.
Water is another matter,
has no direction but its own bright grace,
runs through all imaginable colors,
takes limpid lessons
from stone,
and in those functionings plays out
the unrealized ambitions of the foam.
(--Poem by Pablo Neruda)

Today in Maine water falls from the heavens. Upon the place beneath, we are twice wet. Old dog and I come back from mountain rain-walk, entering through barn with wet cat into kitchen.

Birds can rest and eat. (Cat snoozes at foot of bed.)

We have not yet learned how to speak relationally, listen relationally, live relationally.

Tom R. said last night: "Truth stands in itself."

Let's!

Learn to stand again.

What is itself is compassionately interdependent, relationally no-other.

To be truth where it is "it's own bright grace."

We must change our ways!

They are blacktopping the parking lot between bookshop/bakery and Waterfront restaurant. So, we are at hermitage until 5pm conversation.

Followers of the Way,
the one who at this moment
stands alone, clearly and
lively right before your eyes
and is listening,
this one is nowhere obstructed.
Unhindered this one
penetrates everywhere
and moves freely;
entering all kinds of situations,
is never affected by them
- Rinzai (d.866)

Intelligence, from the book Brilliancy, has to do with beauty. It must be elegant. Patricia brought the book with her, so we read a bit, and spoke of it. In his book, Brilliancy, A.H. Almaas describes and explores human intelligence as an expression of impersonal consciousness.

In an interview, Almaas responds:

Q: Do you differentiate between being present and awareness?

A: Presence is awareness, but then awareness that is aware of itself. Pure awareness can be aware of its own existence, independently of the form and content of any experience. Experience itself then becomes aware of its own presence. Presence and awareness are not two different things, because the experience is non-dual, no subject and object. It is therefore not awareness that is involved in self-reflection, but awareness that is aware of itself by being itself. In other words, consciously being oneself is the same as being conscious of oneself.
(--Translation of interview with Hameed in June 2006, by Han van den Boogaard, Publication in the magazine InZicht {Insight}, issue 1, 2007.)

Consciousness is consciousness. As God is God. As you, you. Put nothing on consciousness, or take nothing away, and it is exactly what it is. So too, God. And you.

"Oneself" is a lovely word. Each is oneself. Why add? Why subtract? These grade-school skills are mistakenly applied to self. Is it inaccurate, then, to speak of 'increasing' consciousness? Or 'decreasing' it? Is there only consciousness or no consciousness? Either on or off? (We used to say that our dog, Cesco, had two speeds: on and off. These days the 'on' speed is low battery; the 'off' has to be watched carefully to see if breathing is taking place.)

Emily Dickinson has a zen-like way of seeing. Even her literary editors take the same words and see them in more than one way:

IX
TO be alive is power,
Existence in itself,
Without a further function,
Omnipotence enough.

To be alive and Will–
'Tis able as a God!
The Further of ourselves be what–
Such being Finitude?
(--Part Five: The Single Hound, Emily Dickinson (1830–86), Complete Poems, 1924.)

Elsewhere, the same lines, presented in a different way:

To be alive — is Power —
Existence — in itself —
Without a further function —
Omnipotence — Enough —

To be alive — and Will!
'Tis able as a God —
The Maker — of Ourselves — be what —
Such being Finitude!

We are finite, bounded. In such circumstances, there is an immediacy to our lives.

Thich Nhat Hanh wrote that "Peace is every step."

Today, life is every breath.

Every breath, a prayer.

Prayer is every thing.

Everything is prayer emanating from itself.

So it is. We live lives of prayer.

Without trying to be aware.

We are.

They gave the Dalai Lama an honorary doctorate this morning at Smith College. He was fitted out with cape, white academic drape, and board hat with tassel. Then he made an address. He looked silly. Nevertheless, he is a humble man sweating under the burden of their honor in hot weather. The drape kept slipping off, his head was itchy -- but he kept their paraphernalia on, and was a perfect Dalai Lama during the whole event.

Childlike wisdom allows dressing-up without caring how you look.

"The notion of ambiguity must not be confused with that of absurdity. To declare that existence is absurd is to deny that it can ever be given a meaning; to say that it is ambiguous is to assert that its meaning is never fixed, that it must be constantly won."
–Simone de Beauvoir, The Ethics of Ambiguity

Outside the bookshop all day the steamroller and bulldozer played tag with backhoe and crane. Tomorrow they'll finally blacktop the parking lot. Out back by the deck Jeff completes the fence helping people not fall into the harbor. The orange construction gate is removed. Stone and gravel will arrive in a few days. Saskia makes a deal with the French restaurant owner to buy four tables and chairs for the patio.

When, in the middle of my life, the earth stalks me
with sticks and stones, I fear its merciless beauty.
This morning a bird woke me with a four-note outcry,
and cried out eighteen times. With the shades down, sleepy
as I was, I recognized his agony.
It resembles ours. With one more heave, the day
sends us a generous orb and lets us
see all sights lost when we lie down finally.
(-- from section iii of poem, Three Valentines to the Wide World, by Mona Van Duyn)

We hear that Di's dad has died. Lies down. And we pray for him, her mother, and her.

Life is exactly what it is -- quite fragile, ferociously tenacious.

What great joy to be able to walk about.

While we can.

Each day.

No matter how funny we look.

The congressman says, "We don't want their oil." He says, "We don't want democracy in Iraq." He says, "We're there to help bring order to Iraq." He says, "There were mistakes made at the going into Iraq, there were mistakes made in the initial stages of the war, but now we are trying to help bring order to the country." He had visited Iraq. He had photographs. He ate baloney sandwiches with three marines from his home state. That's what he wants us to know.

My brief visit to C-Span is all the visit I need. I am as insane as all get-out.

Where beauty is, then there is ugliness;
where right is, also there is wrong.
Knowledge and ignorance are interdependent;
delusion and enlightenment condition each other.
Since olden times it has been so.
How could it be otherwise now?
Wanting to get rid of one and grab the other
is merely realizing a scene of stupidity.
Even if you speak of the wonder of it all,
how do you deal with each thing changing?
--Ryokan

Nothing is different than the way it is in the world. Each thing is exactly what it is. The recently retired director of the central intelligence agency now sits on boards of defense contractors and is paid several millions to advise them how to profit from the war on Iraq and the war on terror. It is a short hop from helping to invade a country to helping oneself to the spoils of war. It seems our process of government makes the hops seamless.

There are thousands upon thousands of students
who have practised meditation and obtained its fruits.
Do not doubt its possibilities because of the simplicity of the method.
If you can not find the truth right where you are,
where else do you expect to find it?
--Dogen

At Friday Evening Conversation, after reading the first half of the final chapter (on death) in John O'Donohue's
Anam Cara, the conversation looked into our changing notions about death, the person dying, and care of body after death as the soul chooses its time to leave the body.

We wondered about how some die easy and some die hard. Animals, someone said, are always present to their surroundings, the immediate moment, and their people. Humans, we observed, are seldom present to where they are, the time they're there, and the person they are near. Is the difficulty many have with death, especially as they near the time of death, that they have not been present most of their lives? O'Donohue writes that the obstacles and diversions begin to fall away as we near death -- impediments to being present -- and the dying person slowly realizes the extent to which they've been present or absent to their life. The new experience of authentic presence, as wonderful as it is, can be distressing to someone who has not practiced presence in their life. They now long for it, want to go back and remedy and redeem the losses they're suddenly aware of, and fight to cling to life desperately, uncertain what will come based on what was.

Those whose belief is such, will be assured there is a forgiveness of absence (some say 'sin') by a loving and compassionate God in the afterlife. This belief is comforting. Others hold that what we sow in this existence will be reaped afterwards. Some posit no afterwards. Others follow the belief in a transition set of bardos which result in a fresh start in an reincarnated being to work on the things not attended to, to practice loving-kindness where it was not practiced before.

The key is presence. And authentic presence is presence toward (and with) each and every being placed in our presence. Authentic presence includes even absence -- a presence in absence, therefore, no sin -- rather a non-separate attentiveness and kindness to each and all, here and away.

It is as though you have an eye
That sees all forms
But does not see itself.
This is how your mind is.
Its light penetrates everywhere
And engulfs everything,
So why does it not know itself?
--Foyan

Each is invited to know itself.

Itself -- the core reality of existence -- becomes our true home.

No need to invade, possess, exploit, or profit from the anguish and suffering of others.

We cultivate generosity and reverence for our brothers and sisters.

We become human.

As God-Itself.

Revealing love.

As it is.