Then, I'll subscribe to "true knowledge."

God speaking to Luther: "Discipleship is not limited to what you can comprehend — it must transcend all comprehension. Not to know where you are going is the true knowledge. My comprehension transcends yours. Thus Abraham went forth from His father… not knowing whither he went. Behold, that is the way of the cross. You cannot find it yourself, so you must let me lead you as though you were a blind man. Wherefore it is not you, no man… but I myself, who instruct you by my Word and Spirit in the way you should go. Not the work which you choose, not the suffering you devise, but the road which is clean contrary to all you choose or contrive or desire — that is the road you must take. To that I call you and in that you must be my disciple."
103-4, DISCIPLESHIP AND THE CROSS, Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Then, I'll concede to work "clean contrary to all you choose or contrive or desire."

Tommy said it yesterday about his way right now: "I don't have the faintest idea."

Michael runs about getting papers signed and systems engaged.

The way is Christ-instructed.

Then, I'll be an someone under instruction. Con-struction.

With.

No.

Idea.

James, they say, was beheaded in 44AD(CE). Brother of John. A fisherman. Now thousands yearly make pilgrimage to Compostela. Santiago de Compostela means get your shoes in order, there's walking to do.

Teamwork
The Buddha compared faith to a blind giant who meets up with a very sharp-eyed cripple, called wisdom. The blind giant, called faith, says to the sharp-eyed cripple, "I am very strong, but I can't see; you are very weak, but you have sharp eyes. Come and ride on my shoulders. Together we will go far." The Buddha never supported blind faith, but a balance between heart and mind, between wisdom and faith. The two together will go far. The saying that blind faith can move mountains unfortunately omits the fact that, being blind, faith doesn't know which mountain needs moving. That's where wisdom is essential, which means that a thorough understanding of the teaching is crucial.
--Ayya Khema

Beheading is barbarous.

Head and heart must be retained for balance and equanimity.

Mary Beth walked the pilgrimage.

I don't walk enough these days.

My understanding is not thorough.

I keep on.

One man says "ascendant masters". Another says "praying mantis." A third says "holy spirit." I'm saying (this being Tuesday Conversation) "mind."

In the stillness by the empty window
I sit in formal meditation
Navel and nose in alignment,
Ears parallel with shoulders.
Moonlight floods the room;
The rain stops, but the eaves drip and drip.
Perfect this moment;
In the vast emptiness, my understanding deepens.
- Ryokan (1758-1831)

Does it matter what the imagination chooses to represent the giving and receiving of insight and intuition?

One woman says "Jesus." Another says "higher power." A third says "multidimensional spirit." Someone else says "cosmotheandric revelation."

If all is mind, and there is no isolated, separated, or independent "self" -- then, everything is connected to everything. We are not separate from one another, not from anything.

Name the flow of insight as coming from whatever direction you wish, it is one complete whole even if funneled through particular imaginings from designated sources. When, if fact, there is only one source and one truth: that source is all sources; that truth, all truths.

The proof of any darkness or evil is not other than the proof of any light or goodness, namely, in the fruit. When the fruit is egoistic self-serving power or possession, something's wrong. When the fruit is self-emptying service with humility and inclusion of the needs of others -- something akin to love begins.

Perfect this moment.

Whole.

As it is.

Kindness and sorrow are kindred.

We can, of course, pretend that sorrow is beneath us. The strong know fate, and destiny, and dominion sovereignty. Sorrow, for many, is not an aspect of their god. Their god is ruthless and decisive, above it all and triumphant.

"One who rejects delusions to search for truth,
May achieve skill in discrimination,
But such a student will never reach enlightenment
Because they mistake the enemy for their own child."

Some Christians admire an angel but hate a devil. Some Confucians pine for the ancient kingdom but complain of the present government. All of them attempt to take hold of the true by abandoning the false. They struggle endlessly, but never attain true peacefulness. Zen students who try to reach truth by rejecting delusions are making the same mistake. Learn silence and work on constantly in silence, to see clearly what the mind is.
(--Yoka-daishi, d.713, Commentary by Nyogen Senzaki, Excerpted from Buddhism and Zen)

A new whirligig with four sailboats, the cloth sails of which tack as they circumnavigate the pointless four directions of wind vane, rises from the porch of the harbour room. In the boat channels of the water, schooners and assorted craft sail by. The marine engineer says he could teach sailing using the whirligig. He says if we were to attain the lovely wooden sailboat he'd look after the engine and systems.

Joannie was up for 5 days staying over the shop. She was pleased to tell her Princeton stories to all hands.

Kindness

Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.
Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.
Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.
Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to mail letters and purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
it is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.
(--Poem: "Kindness" by Naomi Shihab Nye, from The Words Under the Words: Selected Poems. Eighth Mountain Press, 1995.)

As we age we suspect that each phone message could be the last sound heard of a loved one's voice, how each nod and smile to passing stranger could be the final one, and how no step across wet field with old dog companion might follow, suddenly, the last step taken together.

I watch mortality sidle alongside my awareness. Someone will have to pick up the clothes left fell about. The sweet drizzle of July dusk cannot dampen the joy of evening walk.

An Irish melancholy finds quiet company this solitary Monday.

We'll wait a bit longer for kindness to turn the corner of white fence gone tender.

Could it find this room?

Will I welcome it to my amnesiac being?

Accept its dwelling?

Remember to be.

Kind.

Apparently the Secretary of Defense cried while talking about writing condolence notes to families of military personnel killed in Iraq.

Mr. Gates captured the sadness we feel about American kids trapped in a desert waiting to be blown up, sent there by men who once refused to go to a warped war themselves.
(--in column by Maureen Dowd, Published: July 22, 2007)

I find myself crying listening to real men and women speak about their experiences in combat. There are tears when the woman pilot in wheelchair and with service dog talked to an anonymous "Sir" whose empty absence conjured the one who sent her to her brokenness. Tears for the helicopter pilot who came back alone from a mission, who cannot straighten his head and neck. And tears for the soldier whose wheelchair was a segwayish balancing wheel atop wheel as he related "breathing, breathing, step; breathing breathing, step," attempting to make it from transport plane seat to his waiting wheelchair in rear.

"An ideal Zen student neither seeks the true
Nor avoids the untrue.
They know that these are merely dualistic ideas
That have no form.
Non-form is neither empty nor not empty.
It is the true form of Buddha’s wisdom."

To assist you in the interpretation of this stanza I shall paraphrase a portion of Shin-jin-mei, a poem written by the Third Patriarch in China.

“Truth is like vast space without entrance or exit. There is nothing more, nor nothing less. Foolish people limit themselves, covering their eyes, but truth is never hidden. Some attend lectures trying to grasp truth in the words of others. Some accumulate books trying to dig truth from the pile of trash. They are both wrong. A few of the wiser ones may learn meditation in their effort to reach an inner void. They chose the void rather than outer entanglements, but it is still the same old dualistic trick. Just think non-thinking if you are a true Zen student.

“There you do not know anything, but you are with everything. There is no choice nor preference, and dualism will vanish by itself. But if you stop moving and hold quietness, that quietness is ever in motion. If children make a noise, you will scold them loudly so that the situation is worse than before. Just forget and ignore the noise, and you will attain peace of mind. When you forget your liking and disliking, you will get a glimpse of oneness. The serenity of this middle way is quite different from the inner void.”
(from, Sho-do-ka – Song of Realization, by Yoka-daishi {d.713}, Commentary by Nyogen Senzaki 1953)

I'm not there. Not yet. Maybe never. So, I try. And then I try to keep that "try" mind.

There are so many brilliant men leading the effort to rule the world, own the oil, kill the enemy, and punish dissent. They are far more brilliant than those among us whose practice is to hear another, serve a brother, console someone suffering, listen to grieving loss, and share some joy when it presents itself.

So many brilliant minds as operatives. So few listening hearts as humans.

The fountains mingle with the river,
And the rivers with the Ocean,
The winds of Heaven mix forever
With a sweet emotion;
Nothing in the world is single;
All things by law divine
In one spirit meet and mingle.
Why not I with thine? —
(--1st stanza from poem: "Love's Philosophy" by Percy Bysshe Shelley.)

When people first begin to suspect and realize that Jesus was not other than Christ, they begin to make room in their consciousness for his words to seep deep within.

This is called listening.

It is not blinding, (to throw contrast to Paul's metaphor). It is silently shaded with longing to hear -- which accompanies a sudden and irreparable willingness to listen.

Please, let's hurry. There are men and women trapped in the desert waiting to be blown up.

Those whose imagination is vicious do not care.

This is a call to practice to those who do.

It always surprises that we are mostly stuck inside our ego.

Sagehood has nothing
To do with governing others
But is a matter of ordering oneself.
Nobility has nothing
To do with power and rank,
But is a matter of self realization;
Attain self-realization,
And the whole world
Is found in the self.
Happiness has nothing
To do with wealth and status,
But is a matter of harmony.
- Lao-tze

Self-realization is the end of ego.

Come to this end.

And disappear.

Disclaimerlessness.

No claims one way or other.

If other people offer you advice, instead of thinking, What business is it of yours to be making suggestions? Respect what they have to say and consider yourself as the disciple of all beings.
--The Dalai Lama

No preface. No apology.

Just say it.

Then, quiet. Hollow reed.

Make no prison home.

Word open being.

At the National Theater Workshop for the Handicapped in Belfast this evening wounded warriors read and performed dramatic monologues as rain fell on the streets.

Every thing,
Every place is real,
Each particle makes
Up the Original Person.
Still, the absolutely real
Is voiceless,
The true body’s
Majestically out of sight.
- Chosha (9th century)

Their bodies were there to see, hear, and remember.

We're their witnesses.

They, our conscience.

She asked if we had any books on Shamanism. Just after she left, the UPS man brought a box containing Mircea Eliade's study of it. A lot of that happens.

The book she'd written was on wood stove in fire place when she came in. She'd put the Buddha statue from our cabin on front cover. She said the book was not selling as well as some thought it might, that she'd expected more people to be interested in the various expressions of faith. "Cookies," I said. "People like cookies."

I asked her if she thought there was a movement to seek the very source of the inspiration that influenced and guided original figures in religions and faith repositories. Or, are people more interested in the historical/contemporary expressions of the founders in established churches, temples, mosques, and rituals?

The beeper upstairs signaling the chocolate chip cookies were done. That, along with a few customers asking for some things, came between the question and her need to keep an appointment.

Only One Teacher
There is only one teacher. What is that teacher? Life itself. And of course each one of us is a manifestation of life; we couldn't be anything else. Now life happens to be both a severe and an endlessly kind teacher. It's the only authority that you need to trust. And this teacher, this authority, is everywhere. You don't have to go to some special place to find this incomparable teacher, you don't have to have some especially quiet or ideal situation; in fact, the messier it is, the better. The average office is a great place. The average home is perfect. Such places are pretty messy most of the time--we all know from firsthand experience! That is where authority, the teacher is.
--Charlotte Joko Beck

Gurus and gadgets don't guarantee holiness or skill. We need to practice both. There are enough (to too many) teachers and savants, celebrities and adepts. For the ordinary person, practice and life are two of the best resources.

And we must make room for skeptics and atheists. There's much to ponder here:

"All thinking men are atheists." -- Ernest Hemingway

When I think of all the harm [the bible] has done, I despair of ever writing anything to equal it. --Oscar Wilde

SAINT, n. A dead sinner revised and edited. --Ambrose Bierce

There ain't no answer. There ain't going to be any answer. There never has been an answer. That's the answer. --Gertrude Stein

Do not let yourself be deceived: great intellects are skeptical. --Friedrich Nietzsche

Millions long for immortality who don't know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon. --Susan Ertz

God is love, but get it in writing. --Gypsy Rose Lee

Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of our own mind. --Ralph Waldo Emerson

The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one. --George Bernard Shaw
(--from The Atheist's Bible, By Joan Konner)

I burnt the chocolate chip cookies. Either the oven wasn't measuring right, or I left them in too long. Like religion and religions, cookies are at the mercy of human attention.

[Mircea] Eliade [1907-1986] was a Christian and Jungian - he met Carl Jung for the first time in 1950, and two years later he interviewed Jung at the Eranos Conference. "The modern world is desacralized," Jung said in the interview, "that is why it is in a crisis. Modern man must rediscover a deeper source of his own spiritual life."
http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/eliade.htm

The aesthetics, the mnemonics, and the periodic glimpses of inspiration would be missed if religions continue their spiral toward inconsequence and irrelevance. But these glimpses are insufficient yield to warrant grasping on to dissolving forms.

Life, in this regard, is source.

Practice, that is, attentive consciousness, is repetition and remembrance of our individual life in immediate engagement with Life Itself.

Inspiration, that life-affirming boost in the midst of the diminishing sacred, is a reintegrating experience of the source in one's life.

I like the notion that no one has ever seen God.

I like the zen statement that, "It's better to see the face than hear the name."

But I like even better the mysterious possibility that there is no face to see and no name to hear.

The paradox rivets.

No face -- to see.

No name -- to hear.

Spirit. Source. Life.

Itself.

Man of no status

Fog and rain shaded beautifully the chapel/zendo.In the meditation cabin Sunday evening we sat in silence for 40 minutes. Then walked for 10. We chanted the Heart Sutra. Finally, a bell chant was invited from the brass bowl, followed by bow, then tidying zabuton and zafu, afterwards walking to farmhouse.It is all we can do to invite the world to consider peace and simplicity. We try to do each thing mindfully, attending each movement as it is being done. At table this time we read from Zen Keys by Thich Nhat Hanh, got up to get quiche from kitchen, poured water into glasses, then ate in silence for 10 minutes.A bell was rung, and slowly, quietly, we began to speak of what we heard, what we see, what is going on. When time for final circle comes, each around the table has one last chance to say one final thing. Then we offer the closing gatha: "May all beings be happy; May all beings be safe; And may all beings come to dwell in their true home." We depart in silence. Dishes are washed. The evening returns to itself after two hours of it belonging to itself.

Dharma Talk on One MindImagine a child sleeping next to its parents and dreaming it is being beaten or is painfully sick. The parents cannot help the child no matter how much it suffers, for no one can enter the dreaming mind of another. If the child could awaken itself, it could be freed of this suffering automatically. In the same way, one who realizes that his own Mind is Buddha frees himself instantly from the sufferings arising from [ignorance of the law of] ceaseless change of birth-and-death. If a Buddha could prevent it, do you think he would allow even one sentient being to fall into hell? Without Self-Realization one cannot understand such things as these.(--Bassui Tokusho Zenji, from Tricycle's Daily Dharma: July 17, 2007)

Of course there is upset with the world, the war, and the worrisome weaknesses of human ambition. Ceaseless change cuts both ways -- peace is knifed by war, and war is worn out by peaceful longings. The turnings and nods of both the reputable and the disreputable are part of the cycle of change. We grow dizzy with such fluctuation.Still, one must speak. Silence in the face of cruel imprisonment is too costly a virtue. We are not of the stuff that being shielded from the world be considered some spiritual accomplishment. Ours is an incarnational prayer -- our bodies are not enemies. Mind, severed from the wholeness of enlightenment, daggers the heart and ruptures the body. This is why ideologues are so dangerous. They disdain humanity while glorifying a perfection devoid of human experience. They want a God that doesn't exist. So, they create themselves in the image of that non-existent God as substitute for humankind and divinity. Only their ideas, their power, their control, and their distorted purity are worth anything in the world they continually try to manipulate.

Fairy TaleThe little elf is dressed in a floppy capand he has a big rosy nose and flaring white eyebrowswith short legs and a jaunty step, though sometimeshe glides across an invisible pond with a bonfire glow on his cheeks:it is northern Europe in the nineteenth century and peopleare strolling around Copenhagen in the late afternoon,mostly townspeople on their way somewhere,perhaps to an early collation of smoked fish, rye bread, and cheese,washed down with a dark beer: ha ha, I have eaten this excellent mealand now I will smoke a little bit and sit back and stare downat the golden gleam of my watch fob against the coarse dark wool of my vest,and I will smile with a hideous contentment, because I am an evil man,and tonight I will do something evil in this city!(--Poem: "Fairy Tale," by Ron Padgett, from You Never Know, Coffee House Press.)

Small self says: I am the only thing important; you will serve me.True Self says: Welcome home, everyone belongs here; let us be of service to one another!

In his 1936 essays on Hölderlin, Heidegger writes that “Poetry is the establishment of Being by means of the Word.” He clearly is thinking of this poem [Patmos] and particularly of its last lines, in which Hölderlin writes that God most wants that: “the established Word be/Caringly attended, and that/Which endures be construed well./German song must accord with this.”(--from The Tower Between Being and Time, by Scott Horton, Harpers Magazine, http://harpers.org/archive/2007/07/hbc-90000529)

We practice sitting, walking, chanting, listening, eating, speaking, and praying so that, every once in a while, we might remember who we are with one another.It is easy to forget. It happens all the time. When we forget, we busy making ideas and ideologies that try to fashion a fairy tale which holds that those who are evil must be eliminated, and that only a precious few really know which people and ideas are valuable and worthwhile. Once these fabrications are designed, they are administered and promulgated by means of smirks and sneers communicating triumphal disdain for anyone not imprisoned in airtight pronouncements.As an alternative, we try to remember the reciprocals of "Word" and "Being."We practice remembrance."Bodies belong," Dan Berrigan said, "where words lead."When we practice we do so in memory of the one who said "This, this is my body;" and This, this is my blood."This.All of this.Each of this.Is.Our.Community

All of time is a turn and nod.

Whenever we greet another, that greeting contains the tacit acknowledgment there was a before and there will be an after. It doesn't matter how much we pretend with civility and manners this encounter will expand and extend, unchanging, through eternity. It doesn't. Everything is a falling off into unknown departures and unknowing arrivals. We are as poet Richard Hugo suggests, "seldom better than weather."

Peace and disorder in the world,
The distinction between
Friend and foe,
Follow upon one another
As illusion begets delusion.
A person of spiritual insight
Will immediately recognize
What is wrong and
Before long be rid
Of such an illusion;
In such a case one’s true
Friend may seem a foe and
One’s implacable foe
May appear a friend.
Enmity and friendship
Have no permanent character;
Both of them are illusions.
- Muso (1275-1351)

Surprise is the awkward gift time takes from behind its back, extending to you what is not yours to choose. We like it, or don't -- but there it is.

Standing at bank teller's window, watching behind him the picture feed of Mr Bush without sound turned on, I get a chance to read his face, the visual braille of a person's disclosure without being distracted by substance and meaning. More is revealed by a face than by words. Like the poet I watched from my seat 30 years ago in Philadelphia whose "face was a better poem."

We must not play with his toys. Acceptance of the phrase "war on terror" is an implicit acceptance of endless war. Terror has been a component of this world from the start--along with sin and death, chaos and night. Terrorists who attack us must be fought, and must be stopped. But terrorists, like other people, act on motives; and one way of fighting them is to remove those motives. A war on terror conceived, as Cheney's experiment has been conceived, as a global war of extermination that ends with the killing of the last terrorist, in fact creates more terrorists than it destroys. A global war on terror means a war to the end of time. It is, in essence, a totalitarian idea.

The global war on terror is a pure product of the mind of Cheney working on the mind of Bush. On the one hand, the craving for secrecy, order, and acts of executive will that brook no opposition; on the other hand, the need for simplicity, the love of vicarious battles and intoxicating emotions, and a cause as irrefutable as a local team to lead the cheering for.

"Never wholly separate in your mind," wrote Edmund Burke, "the merits of any political question from the men who are concerned in it." We have seen the men, and we know them by their actions.

They are gathering the forces now for Iran. The carriers on patrol in the Persian Gulf, the series of accusations that hold Iran responsible for the violence in Iraq, the propaganda corps at the American Enterprise Institute turning up the heat--all the preparations are in place in the summer of 2007, just as they were in the summer of 2003. An administration with a modicum of prudence would not risk setting the Muslim world aflame by carving up a second theater of devastation in the Middle East. Yet these are men of wild imaginings.
(--by David Bromwich, "Character of G.W. Bush," Posted July 13, 2007 | 02:11 PM (EST)
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-bromwich/character-of-gw-bush_b_56118.html

Mr. Bush's face is a boy's unimagined viciousness. Perhaps that's why it is hard to separate any more the visages of Mr Bush and Mr. Cheney. They, like William Golding's Samneric, suffer from short-sheeted loyalty, betray the hiding place of holdouts for democracy, and set fire to our small island of liberty. They've turned us over to a deception more surprising than invading and ravaging a country whose leader belonged to their club but who was himself surprised by their substanceless and meaningless stare.

The new surprise is interesting. It is wrapped in pretty blue paper with red edging and topped by white bow. It is a new country with new rules and new fears, one no longer bothered with old documents with naive musings beginning "When in the Course of human events," and "We the People," or "The Conventions of a number of the States." These texts were for a time of idealism and ragged populism. Today we need a formulation fed by fear and run by men who are more than men, namely, protectors unfazed by an absolute certainty and an inability to be wrong.

Who needs laws and representatives when we have God-fearing pastors willing to be what God hesitates to be. Pastors Bush and Cheney have delivered us from civility and delivered us to something that requires a stained and glassy sneer and scowl -- themselves as models for the world.

The Dutch novelist Mulisch captures what we awaken to after shock and surprise:

On the terrace Max took a couple of deep breaths. What a night! But now it had hit them, and on other nights other people were the victims, and tonight countless other people were being struck too -- there had never been a day or a night or even a moment when something like this was not happening to someone, for as long as humanity had existed. Doom roamed the earth constantly, like a swallow through a swarm of gnats, with sharp twists and turns,its beak wide open.
(--p.269, in the novel, The Discovery of Heaven, by Harry Mulisch)

Something is turning in this country.

Someone is nodding.

What, in their soundless vacuum, comes next?

If we look with love at the world. If we open our mouths and speak looking love. "I create as I speak." That's what "Abracadabra" means.

What we are creating as we speak?

No one knows why America has invaded and occupied Iraq. There is speculation it is to build and control a large embassy and many military bases in Iraq so that the end of the world might be more quickly accomplished. Moving the UN to Baghdad and encouraging the Apocalyptic End-time is a subset of the US interest in liberating Iraq for Democracy. That, and word has it, the Brooklyn Bridge is for sale again.

In the realm of True Purity
there is no such thing as
“I” or “he” or “she;”
nor can “friend” and “foe”
be found.
The slightest confusion of mind
and innumerable differences
and complications arise.
- Muso (1275-1351)

The Second Coming is surely at hand. That, and Barry Bonds' breaking out of his slump to inch toward Hank Aaron's home run record. With the Yankees ten games behind Boston there is not much concern that Roger Clemons will get the 4 million dollars for the 4 games he's lost as mercenary pitcher for the New York team. Receiving one million dollars for one or two hours throwing a round ball that others hit with a wooden stick makes as much sense as paying 2.5 billion dollars a week to shoot and bomb and kill men and women who only want to do their laundry, make bread, and talk about the weather. Oh yes, there are bad people in Iraq too. They want to kill Americans who walk and drive their streets with deadly force seeking to root out and destroy evil and evil-doers.

Who needs Christ. We've got a new embassy and plenty of ammunition. Money is no object. Besides, if Jesus were to show up, he'd probably be seen as an Al Qaida suspect, be hog-tied, beaten, executed, his body tossed in a back alley on the south side of Baghdad. We can't have some "old Christianity" interfering with our "new world righteousness." Pastors Bush and Cheney ask their flock to turn in their hymnal to page 76, intoning that reliable spiritual "Disgracing with no Amazement." The faithful lift their eyes toward the Dow Jones Average and have elevating thoughts.

It is truly a marvelous world when young men get shot in the face attempting to hold to the rule of law while other men who make the law, and who vow to uphold the law, distort, ignore, break and sneer at the law.

Being crazed on a new moon morning doesn't mean that the world isn't crazed on its own.

Back in a familiar neighborhood, even the death of one man is sorrowful. Let's not forget that each death is an individual loss with wide reach. Last night at the shop a woman and her husband were in to say hello. Their son was killed early on in this sad Iraq story. We continue to breathe.

How long does a soul stay behind after departing what we call their body and their life?

“Russel,” said Father Ivanov, “is in dire need of our prayers whether he stays with us or passes on.”

At the hospital, George Kallaur, an archpriest in the Russian Orthodox Church, conducted a 10-minute service after Officer Timoshenko was pronounced dead. Twenty people crammed into the officer’s hospital room while others stood in the doorway and halls. As part of Russian Orthodox tradition, Mr. Kallaur said, friends and family members kissed the officer’s hands and feet.

Mr. Kallaur said that on Friday he had brought Officer Timoshenko a large silver crucifix from Russia and placed it around the officer’s neck, hoping it would help him recover. The crucifix, which has a compartment inside, contained the bones of a third-century martyr.

Earlier this week, Mr. Kallaur performed Officer Timoshenko’s absolution, called a “dumb and blind” confession because the officer was unable to communicate. The Russian Orthodox church believes that a dead person’s soul remains present for three days near the deceased’s family members.

“The soul,” said Mr. Kallaur, “while it is still alive, can absolutely still hear.”
(-- Officer Dies Five Days After Shooting in Brooklyn, By TIMOTHY WILLIAMS
Published: July 15, 2007, New York Times, "Police officers hung bunting outside the 71st Precinct station in memory of Officer Russel Timoshenko, who died Saturday from his injuries.")

I grieve the young police officer. His loss, like a country's loss of sanity and grace during an immoral time of terror, is grave and terrible.

No wonder so many pray for the end of the world. No wonder so many no longer care to hear the news.

There is no wonder left.

There's no philosophy.

Without wonder there's no philosophy, said Aristotle.

No wonder nothing is wonderful.

What a loss. Is this day one? Or two? Or three?

Abracadabra! The phrase is Aramaic, avda kedabra, which means "Creating as speaking."

It is always the first breath. Inhale. Add the deepest longing -- that which is truest, within and without us. Ok, exhale.

Speak now.

Only this.

With love.

Create the world.

Some follow the law of abundance. Some, the law of attraction.

I follow the law of emptiness. In this law everything is what it is, and everyone belongs.

I thought of following the law of God, but that law seems too difficult. The law of God is: Love is nowhere not; and, Love is the embodiment of love.

See what I mean? If "There is only love," and I don't love who and what I am, I cannot love anyone else. If "Here is love alone," and I don't love the person, place, or thing right here, I cannot love myself.

This is why God is annoying. However we spell the word "God," (whether "Life" or "Reality" or "Great Spirit" or "One"), there and here is a wholeness within which we dwell, within which everything is, and within which nothing else exists.

The river of Zen is quiet,
Even in the waves;
The water of stability is clear,
Even in the waves.
- Xuedou

This morning the laud chorus of bird and chipmunk, passing car and squirrel, sunlit leaf and bamboo tube, whirr of hummingbird and drops of dew falling through stillness -- conduct Ragged Mountain monastic practice. This is done in and of itself.

When I see the heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and stars, which you set in their place –
what is man, that you should take thought for him? what is the son of man, that you should look after him?

You have made him but one step lower than the angels; you have crowned him with glory and honour; you have set him over the works of your hands.

You have put everything beneath his feet, cattle and sheep and the beasts of the field,
the birds in the air and the fish in the sea, whatever passes along the paths of the waters.

How wonderful is your name above all the earth, O Lord, our Lord!
(--from Psalm 8)

No step lower. Nothing beneath feet. Man is service attempting to wake from sleep.

An apple drops from old and broken apple tree in Sally's field.

So many are abundantly attracted to the power of intention. I am content with the foolish humility of emptiness.

Existence might or might not be absurd.

from Latin absurdus, from ab- + surdus deaf, stupid
1 : ridiculously unreasonable, unsound, or incongruous
2 : having no rational or orderly relationship to human life : MEANINGLESS ; also : lacking order or value
3 : dealing with the absurd or with absurdism . (Mirriam-Webster)

I certainly am deaf. Also, stupid. I do not hear the true and enormously lovely sound that permeates and surrounds this existence in this world.

If I had to guess, that sound is love. It just might be what Pythagoras and Kepler called the "music of the spheres." It could merely be the sound of stillness embracing silence.

Or, maybe it is the gaze of love seeing itself through itself.

What a lovely looking morning!

The men at the prison were good teachers today. Maybe I was , finally, for today, a good student.

Love is the embodiment of love.

Love is nowhere not.

When you’re settled in Zen,
Your mind is serene,
Unaffected by worldly distractions.
You enter the realm of enlightenment,
And transcend the ordinary world,
Leaving the worldly while
In the midst of society.
- Fenyang

If, even in prison, one embodies the reality of love, there's no need to try to make the dismal and oftentimes hateful atmosphere better. It is enough to be the atmosphere with oneself that does not hide the open resonance of love.

Love yourself, love others. Love others, love yourself.

Love yourself and others, there are no others, there is no self. Only no other. Only true Self.

The thing about love, is that it is true even when it is not there.

Embodied, it is nowhere not.

I am sickened. How long will the American people allow their administration to create terror in Iraq? Will our apathy and false arguments destroy the country of Iraq and this country of the United States?

Some say civilization itself must be destroyed -- for its indifference, hatred of truth, and unwillingness to act when it experiences cruel and cynical lies.

Our souls are crushed into the dust,
our bodies dragged down to the earth.
(--from Psalm 44)

We are not separate from the people of Iraq. The suffering they undergo continues and shifts from an Iraqi dictator to an American conqueror. Their society disintegrates in a way differing from the way our society disintegrates. Men and women in positions of influence argue the merits of getting out of Iraq. They use words like "victory" and "defeat." They think they are defending freedom and ensuring security by perpetuating occupation and slaughter of both Iraqis and American military personnel. There is an insanity surrounding the arguments made.

Over the past several months The Nation has interviewed fifty combat veterans of the Iraq War from around the United States in an effort to investigate the effects of the four-year-old occupation on average Iraqi civilians. These combat veterans, some of whom bear deep emotional and physical scars, and many of whom have come to oppose the occupation, gave vivid, on-the-record accounts. They described a brutal side of the war rarely seen on television screens or chronicled in newspaper accounts.

Their stories, recorded and typed into thousands of pages of transcripts, reveal disturbing patterns of behavior by American troops in Iraq. Dozens of those interviewed witnessed Iraqi civilians, including children, dying from American firepower. Some participated in such killings; others treated or investigated civilian casualties after the fact. Many also heard such stories, in detail, from members of their unit. The soldiers, sailors and marines emphasized that not all troops took part in indiscriminate killings. Many said that these acts were perpetrated by a minority. But they nevertheless described such acts as common and said they often go unreported--and almost always go unpunished.
(--In an article article posted July 9, 2007 (July 30, 2007 issue) of The Nation Magazine, entitled "The Other War: Iraq Vets Bear Witness," by Chris Hedges & Laila Al-Arian, (http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070730/hedges). Military veterans speak about the violence and terror on Iraqi citizens by American forces in Iraq.)

No one can claim they didn't know. No one can make an argument that Mr. Bush and friends have not cynically exploited 9-11 for their private rationale and that the vast majority of American citizens, politicians, and media people have given this madness permission and cover. The secrecy of immorality perpetrated by these men will come into the open some day. We will be ashamed and horrified at what we accepted and condoned. Phrases like "the fog of war" and "the shock of 9-11" will no longer be tolerated as excuse for the unlawful and traitorous acts of men in power.

So many have become infuriated at the wanton disregard of law and ethics on the part of the American administration, it is a wonder retaliation has not yet exploded again on American soil. The pity will be, that when it does, this administration will use it as justification for everything it has done, denying any responsibility for the backlash. When it occurs, it will be suspect and paradoxical. The slap back to our face will be the slap back to another incursion into another country. The flopping of bombs and death of intelligent discourse will drown out the cries of heart and mind issuing from people made to suffer further degradation into senseless folly.

Simple-minded men and women might someday drop their red/blue, democrat/republican, left/right, conservative/liberal dualistic divides they've used as reasons to avoid facing the moral and human, some say divine and cosmic, implications of the lies and deceits foisted on and cultivated by the populace of the American nation. There will be a reckoning. But will we survive the time from now until then?

Going Against the Stream
The Buddha described his teachings as "going against the stream."The unflinching light of mindful awareness reveals the extent to which we are tossed along in the stream of past conditioning and habit. The moment we decide to stop and look at what is going on (like a swimmer suddenly changing course to swim upstream instead of downstream), we find ourselves battered by powerful currents we had never even suspected--precisely because until that moment we were largely living at their command.
(--Stephen Batchelor, Tricycle's Daily Dharma: July 12, 2007)

The cranky local Irishman who has disappeared from the area would say that people in America are fools, easily led and deceived, and just plain dumb. (And that's what he'd say on a good day!) He could be right, however depressing it might have been to hear it said again and again.

If you feel depressed about the war and the inability of anyone to stop the insanity -- welcome to the community. It is a meditation both difficult and necessary. There is no clever ending to this course of events, no cute phrase to sum up and resolve this human stupidity and ignorance.

We have been enslaved by our own ignorance.

We are slaves of misguided men in power.

Our soul, imprisoned and grieving, longs for respite and release.

O God, the world had fallen flat in the dust but your Son’s humility stood it upright once more.
Fill your faithful people with a holy joy:
take those whom you have torn away from slavery to sin
and make them rejoice eternally.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,
who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
God for ever and ever.
Amen
(--Concluding Prayer, in today's Christian tradition Office of Readings.)

Must we turn to something other than us? Or are we imploring our deepest sense of truth and love?

We must come awake to this question.

Awake to this reality.

Prayer for Peace
Send Thy peace, O Lord, which is perfect and everlasting,
that our souls may radiate peace.
Send Thy peace, O Lord, that we may think, act,
and speak harmoniously.
Send Thy peace, O Lord, that we may be contented
and thankful for Thy bountiful gifts.
Send Thy peace, O Lord, that amidst our worldly strife
we may enjoy thy bliss.
Send Thy peace, O Lord, that we may endure all,
tolerate all in the thought of thy grace and mercy.
Send Thy peace, O Lord, that our lives may become a
divine vision, and in Thy light all darkness may vanish. Send Thy peace, O Lord, our Father and Mother, that we
Thy children on earth may all unite in one family.
Amen.
(--from Who We Are, Prayers, Morning Prayer, Sufi Order International, http://www.sufiorder.org/prayers.html

So we pray.

Darkly.

Work is prayer. Prayer is work.

Prayer and Work.

Ora et Labora

With gratitude for Benedict, originator of western monasticism.

The purpose of Zen is
to enable people to immediately
transcend the ordinary and the holy,
just getting people to
awaken on their own,
forever cutting off
the root of doubt.
- Fayan

The root of doubt is the belief we are separate and inferior, and thus, consequently, we counter by behaving like we are more important and more powerful than others.

Without this root doubt we rest in the reality that we are not separate and therefore not inferior nor superior, not better nor worse, than what is wholly us.

“Founding a monastery is a continuous process of sawing to build your design and trying to dispose of the sawdust, while you're always being forced to reconstruct. You have to give it your all and it's never done.”
(--St Benedict)

What's to be done?

All of it.

Our monastery is the attention we give to all of it.

Hatred says, "I don't like you the way you are."

The Inner Enemy
Hatred is far worse than any ordinary enemy. Of course, ordinary enemies harm us: that is why we call them enemies. But the harm they do is not just in order to makes us unhappy; it is also meant to be of some help to themselves or their friends. Hatred, the inner enemy, however, has no other function but to destroy our positive actions and make us unhappy. That is why Shantideva calls it "My foe, whose sole intention is to bring me sorrow." From the moment it first appears, it exists for the sole purpose of harming us. So we should confront it with all the means we have, maintain a peaceful state of mind, and avoid getting upset.
--The Dalai Lama

Love says, "I like you as you are."

Let us pray.
Of your kindness, Lord, dispel the darkness of this night, so that we your servants may go to sleep in peace and wake to the light of the new day, rejoicing in your name.
Through Christ our Lord, Amen.
(--Prayer ending Tuesday Compline)

The light of a new day is the one that helps us see one another as we are, in the light of acceptance and compassion, free from the need to possess or change what we see.

It's grace, it's a gift, to allow with love and light that which is love and light to move in and through each one of us.

It is a practice worth practicing.

Small self says,"Go away -- I'm the only important thing here." True Self says, "Welcome home -- everyone belongs here."

Just get to the root,
Don’t worry about the branches,
For someday you will
Come to have them naturally.
If you have not attained the basis,
Even if you consciously study
You cannot attain the outgrowths either.
- Yangshan

The root basis of the spiritual life is acknowledging the need to belong with what is true.

Breathe. Enquire. Engage. Practice.

Beep! (A reminder.)

Poet Derek Walcott writes, "Sit. Feast on your life."

Make your way through this world re-membering what is right here and now.

Do, don't own.
Live with, not for.
Love to give;
give to, not for.
Give to love.
Love, don't own.
(--from Fragments, by poet Phillip Booth, Oct. 8, 1925 - July 2, 2007)

Thank you, Phillip.

This.

This is our life.

There's nothing to reach for. Just fall.

If you want to be free,
Get to know your real self.
It has no form, no appearance,
No root, no basis, no abode,
But is lively and buoyant.
It responds with versatile facility,
But its function cannot be located.
Therefore when you look for it
You become further from it;
When you seek it,
You turn away from it all the more.
- Linji (d. 867)

Our natural state, (they say), is openness, is freedom. When the ego is starved by our not biting on judging opportunities, we tumble into the fact of the open, the free, the encompassing reality of what some call God.

For the Lord is your shelter and refuge;
you have made the Most High your dwelling-place.
Evil will not reach you,
harm cannot approach your tent;
for he has set his angels to guard you
and keep you safe in all your ways.
(--from Psalm 91, Sunday Compline)

In all our ways. Dropped through. With awareness.

The disciples of Jesus, sent out, were not to bring the kingdom of heaven. Those to whom they went were already near the kingdom of heaven for them -- the disciples wished to tell them where they were, what was near, and the freedom that comes with loving what is their natural inheritance.

Litany

You are the bread and the knife,
The crystal goblet and the wine...
-Jacques Crickillon

You are the bread and the knife,
the crystal goblet and the wine.
You are the dew on the morning grass
and the burning wheel of the sun.
You are the white apron of the baker,
and the marsh birds suddenly in flight.

However, you are not the wind in the orchard,
the plums on the counter,
or the house of cards.
And you are certainly not the pine-scented air.
There is just no way that you are the pine-scented air.

It is possible that you are the fish under the bridge,
maybe even the pigeon on the general's head,
but you are not even close
to being the field of cornflowers at dusk.

And a quick look in the mirror will show
that you are neither the boots in the corner
nor the boat asleep in its boathouse.

It might interest you to know,
speaking of the plentiful imagery of the world,
that I am the sound of rain on the roof.

I also happen to be the shooting star,
the evening paper blowing down an alley
and the basket of chestnuts on the kitchen table.

I am also the moon in the trees
and the blind woman's tea cup.
But don't worry, I'm not the bread and the knife.
You are still the bread and the knife.
You will always be the bread and the knife,
not to mention the crystal goblet and--somehow--the wine.
(--Poem by Billy Collins)

It is enough to be what we are.

With awareness, our life gone through, trusting the fall, accepting the given grace of the simple fact of being-alone-with-(God, or)-truth; arrives the open, freeing.

With sound of bell, the man said after meditation cabin practice at table, tears.

Mere surprise.

Early lauds and late compline. The balance of the day.

It is not, as some ancients and the Confucians taught, that you sweep away ordinary feelings and bring into existence some holy understanding. When ordinariness and holiness exist no more, how is that? An octagonal grindstone is turning in empty space, a diamond pestle grinds to dust the iron mountain.
- Daikaku (1213-1279)

Bells at end of Salve Regina.

Presence itself remains as itself.

Only vigil light remains as we leave.

Empty cabin.

One light.

Note: For Summer 2007 Hermitage Update, and Events at Meetingbrook, please see Today at Meetingbrook, Sunday, May 20, 2007

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

Acceptance is the issue. Surrender the means. Desolation, the impetus. The ascetical life is not punishment of the body -- it is allowing each their own reality, with kind attention.

The reverential mind can let things be and celebrate a person's presence or a thing's beauty without wanting something from them.
(--from p.77, section "The Ascetical Presence: The Wisdom to Subtract from the Feast" in chapter on "Presence" in John O'Donohue's Eternal Echoes, c.1999)

We've decided the reason there is so much recidivism among released prisoners is because the monastic experience had while incarcerated isn't supported back in the world. Harsh distraction and indifferent hustles tear away the dissolved self experienced in solitude and introspection -- replacing it with a fortified false self that tries to juggle disturbed values and desperate loneliness -- only to drop, and lose the act.

We need an authentic spirituality to offset a formulaic religiosity.

Everything collapses first.

Then comes prayer.

Nothing to say. No one to say it to.

Well, then...Shut my mouth!

* 9. It is a discourse that inevitably completes itself again in a new silence.

A God who would be completely transcendent -- in addition to the fact that it would be contradictory to hope to speak about such a God -- would be a superfluous, if not perverse hypothesis. A completely transcendent God would deny divine immanence at the same time that it would destroy human transcendence. The divine mystery is ineffable and no discourse can describe it.
(-- from NINE WAYS NOT TO TALK ABOUT GOD, by Raimon Panikkar, in CrossCurrents, http://www.crosscurrents.org/panikkar.htm)

There are times when giving up seems the only option.

In spiritual life, it is called surrender.

I look around.

To whom does one surrender?

What is being given up?

Not even this is easy.

Evening this is peace.

How about that?

"May the Lord be vivified by your being." That's the phrase I heard just before waking from night's sleep this morning. It was a dream.Or, this life is a dream. Either way, to vivify is how awareness brings skillfulness.

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

A woman donates a whole bunch of classical music cds that belonged to her father. She says, "The more someone is lost from God, the more they need to acquire material goods." It is a sentence for me to ponder. I would think that the pathway music leads along was the footing of divine traverse.

There was great hubbub on the patio today for 4th of July celebration.

Pastoral

When I was younger
it was plain to me
I must make something of myself.
Older now
I walk back streets
admiring the houses
of the very poor:
roof out of line with sides
the yards cluttered
with old chicken wire, ashes,
furniture gone wrong;
the fences and outhouses
built of barrel staves
and parts of boxes, all,
if I am fortunate,
smeared a bluish green
that properly weathered
pleases me best of all colors.
No one
will believe this
of vast import to the nation.
(Poem: "Pastoral" by William Carlos Williams, from The Collected Poems of W.C. Williams. New Directions, 1991.)

This nation is having a difficult time remembering that what you make of yourself does not exclude what you make of others.

It's not too late to turn back from the hateful edge of the direction some would take us.

July 4th is a good day to begin that turn.

One good turn deserves others.

Vivify well, with humility!

Restart the music.

No doubt about it, doubt is OK. Ask Thomas. He doubted. Then he saw. Until we see, doubt is honest inquiry. We need more honest inquiry.

Whether you are going or staying or sitting or lying down, the whole world is your own self. You must find out whether the mountains, rivers, grass, and forests exist in your own mind or exist outside it. Analyze the ten thousand things, dissect them minutely, and when you take this to the limit you will come to the limitless. When you search into it you come to the end of search, where thinking goes no further and distinctions vanish. When you smash the citadel of doubt, then the Buddha is simply yourself.
- Daikaku (1213-1279)

It's an odd practice to take someone else's word for things. "He said," or, She said" are often exercises in miscommunication; they are most often prey to the demon of misinterpretation. Leave someone else's word where it belongs -- it belongs in and to that person. "Go and find your own word," is what a kind teacher would say.

St Thomas the Apostle
The apostle Thomas is famous for doubting the resurrection of Jesus when his fellow apostles told him about it; but if he is the sceptical apostle, he is also the believing apostle, for having seen and touched a risen man, he made the immediate leap of faith and so became the first apostle to call Jesus God.
(--Tuesday 3 July 2007, Saint Thomas, Apostle, Feast. http://www.universalis.com/)

Learning to see for yourself, like learning to see yourself, begins a long, lonely, yet lovely journey up the path of search, through thickets of dark despair, across deserts of empty promises and expectations, until you cross the sudden river of profound doubt, and step into the wide open expanse and gracious hospitality of vanished distinctions.

Jory writes, adding, "Adyashanti says it like this:"

The true heart of all human beings is the lover of what is. That's why we cannot escape any part of ourselves. This is not because we are a disaster, but because we are conscious and we are coming back for all of ourselves in this birth. No matter how confused we are, we will come back for every part of ourselves that has been left out of the game. This is the birth of real compassion and love. For too long, it has been said by spiritual traditions that you have to slay so much to get to love. But this is a myth. The truth is that it is love that really liberates.
(- Adyashanti, from Emptiness Dancing)

To be mindful means, ultimately, to be what you are doing -- every primary instant, and each second of existence. This being of incarnated and eternal presence is one of love.

I don't mind doubt.

In the same way, I don't mind breathing.

I just wouldn't want to be without either.

Until I am.

The Declaration of Indefendants has just been issued.

It replaces the old, worn out documents of Constitution, and the other Declaration of 1776. They were Old America. Bush and Cheney are the new floundering fathers.

At night, deep in the mountains,
I sit in meditation.
The affairs of the world
Never reach here;
Everything is quiet and empty,
All the incense has
Been swallowed up
By the endless night.
My robe has become a garment of dew.
Unable to sleep I
Walk out into the woods
Suddenly, above the highest peak,
The full moon appears.
- Ryokan (1758-1831)

Mr George Bush has commuted the prison sentence time of Mr. I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby. This new declaration voids all laws for the Executive White House.

Thank God for the full moon.

At least there one sees something to respect.

A woman visiting the shop said she was an atheist. She expected, maybe, an argument. She got none. Instead she got a piece of chocolate cake with rum icing.

Religious people can be so intolerant. So can the irreligious. Factor out the common -- and conclude it is people that can be intolerant -- adding or subtracting religion is only a foil to a deeper realization.

To be resolute in the way means
from the beginning never to
lose sight of it, whether in a
place of calm or in a place of strife;
to not cling to quiet places nor
shun places where there is disturbance.
- Daikaku (1213-1279)

When we joked with Tom the mailman on Saturday about how there was no good business reason we should have lasted 11 years and be beginning our 12th, he said : "Well here it's all about people and relationships, isn't it?"

Another to whom he said, ‘Follow me’, replied, ‘Let me go and bury my father first’. But he answered, ‘Leave the dead to bury their dead; your duty is to go and spread the news of the kingdom of God’.
(--Luke 9:51 - 62)

That news is people and relationships.

Joy is entering into the reality of both with open eyes.

The dead in death, and those dead in life, will bury one another with belief in the death of life. Without that belief, life perfects itself in life and through death.

Each is, and both are, good.

Ed from Wisconsin visits at noon for "15 at 12" our midday 5 minutes reading, 5 minutes silence, 5 minutes speaking from the heart. There were five of us gathered today, We read from Jean Vanier's Community and Growth.

All the holy ones have turned within and sought the self, and by this went beyond all doubt. To turn within means all the 24 hours and in every situation, to pierce one by one through the layers covering the self, deeper and deeper, to a place that cannot be described. It is when thinking comes to an end and making distinctions ceases, when wrong views and ideas disappear of themselves without having to be driven forth, when without being sought the true action and the true impulse appear of themselves. It is when one can know the truth of the heart.
- Daikaku (1213-1279)

Kristen and son grab two chocolate chip cookies. She says she and her husband will come to "rehearse" on our deck. Right now three folks play and sing as Alan Watts delivers a talk from an old CD.

In prison yesterday we decided that the old task of deciphering the specific scientific and reaching for the transcendent intuitive might be worded anew by focusing on "be-ing" and "be-yond." It is the task of attending to what is measurably right here and what is immeasurably everywhere infinite.

A young girl comes in and says to her parents, "Are you interested in books or are you interested in beautiful?" The moon was rising , full and orange, southwest of Curtis Island from well and deep beyond the waters of the North Atlantic. The child is clarion to the sweet loveliness of cosmos.

Three women from Thomaston are enjoying their night out in the restaurant, come over laughing, striking gongs and laughing their delight -- and wind up purchasing The Grace in Dying for a friend of theirs.

A man regales two female patio-sitters with his odd assortment of stories that don't promise much for the rest of the evening.

A large and wide assortment of people stop in. It's a holiday weekend. Minnesota, New Jersey, Texas, Boston, and New Harbor Maine are each represented with friendly welcome and conversation.

It's an odd life.

But it's ours.

And we love it.

Twelve years ago today we opened Meetingbrook Bookshop and Bakery.

Our twelfth year begins.

We are grateful.

Earth, mountains, rivers
Hidden in this nothingness.
In the nothingness
Earth, mountains, rivers revealed.
Spring flowers, winter snows:
There’s no being nor non-being,
Nor denial itself.
- Saisho (15th century)

Someone wanted to buy our icon of Ss.Peter and Paul hanging over the cash register. While I was on the phone with a former inmate living in Southern Maine a volunteer brought it out to me for a price check.

It was not meant to be. There was no price on it; the Printery House person at Conception Abbey said it had no such icon in its inventory and didn't carry it anymore (ours being some ten years old) ; we'd given it to ourselves for our tenth anniversary of the shop; and one of the women kept looking for a lower price than her companion offered.

She said she'd go back home and find it in their catalogue. I wished her luck. I'd been willing to let it go with her. The icon shook the dust off its kissing images, put itself back on the nail in the post along the wall, and attached to itself a "NFS" label, (not for sale).

It's funny how it wanted to stay.

We too.

Seem to.

Want to.

Keep the good company of one another.

Jack Bernard, in the early pages of his book How to Become a Saint, A Beginner's Guide, writes about holiness as being set apart, not for common use. Hmm!

The pause is caused by wondering what it means to be set apart, not for common use.

Don’t tell me how difficult the Way.
The bird’s path, winding far,
Is right before you.
Water of the Dokei Gorge,
You return to the ocean,
I to the mountain.
- Hofuku Seikatsu

There are places that are intended to be for God alone. We might say that "God alone" is all there is. Nor are we other than all there is. It seems a trick phrasing, especially adding the word 'here': God is all there is here. If so, everything is meant to be holy. Each place and each person is a holy place.

We forget this -- if we've ever even considered this.

To be in the world is to be holy. To be of the world -- is to be of common use.

Which seems just fine -- if being of common use is accompanied by the respect and reverence belonging to what is holy. Sadly, often, common use means abuse. This might be why craftsmen are so particular about who uses their finely cared for tools. In the hands of irreverence, the most lovely things are poorly treated and broken down.

“Then a cloud overshadowed them, and from the cloud there came a voice, 'This is my beloved son, the beloved; listen to him!’” (Mark 9:7)

The practice of listening to sounds of a creating God is vital for understanding holiness. Each being is a lovely being. By listening closely to the creating God within and through each being, we begin to come to prayer. God alone is the wholeness of creation and the loveliness of what is here. But this is no hierarchical or separative understanding of God. God alone is the invitation to consider the interweaving loveliness of each in all and all in each.

For years I have prayed some version of the “Jesus Prayer.” The significance isn’t in getting the words just right, and I have felt free to change them. I used to put a lot of thought into formulating the words so they fit my thoughts and feelings. The basic form of the Jesus Prayer is “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” At times when I really felt like a sinner, this felt quite natural.

At other times, it seemed a little awkward. I would think, “Surely it would be more pleasing to God if I took a more upbeat posture toward him. After all, I am his beloved child. Does he want me to always sound like a groveling sinner?” My prayer would follow this thought process until I came to recognize that my prayer was no prayer at all. It was nothing but my own musings about myself and to myself.

I am now learning to stop, and in learning to stop, I am learning to pray. Stopping means stopping my own thinking, reasoning, and evaluating for a time. I still think, reason, and evaluate, but I am learning to stop it at times in order to simply be in the presence of God. I am astonished at the questions I don’t need to ask and the points I don’t need to consider when I am consciously in the presence of God.

The point I am trying to make here is that it is important to take up some prescribed forms of prayer and enter into them without having to invent everything for ourselves. The notion that prayer has to be arranged to personally and individually fit us is just another manifestation of our incessant drive to fit the universe to ourselves. The attempt to conform the universe to ourselves is precisely what we must stop in order to pray.
(--from IN ORDER TO LISTEN, article originally written by Jack Bernard in January of 2001 for Church of the Sojourners)

In contemporary culture there is a strong (and important) emphasis on finding, communicating, and exploring individual opinions. It's how we learn. When people's points of view are not heard, some form of tyranny or suppression is afoot. However difficult or tedious it might be to suffer through the wide variety of personally held points of view, it is a valuable practice. If, of course, someone is wed to only their view and show no hope of entering genuine exploration of differing views -- the difficulty and tedium become more acute.

I often miss the point.

In an older metaphor, missing the mark or missing the point or missing the goal was called "hatah" (in Hebrew) or, sin.

(I hear Echhart Tolle's voice asking "What's the point?" when I think of this matter). Perhaps there's more to this question "What's the point?" than mere confusion or frustration encountered in daily life or monkey mind.

What is the point?

(If "God" is the ultimate "What is" -- or perhaps, if God is what is wholeness, and this alone -- we are not excluded from this entirety.

The German word "gestalt" is found defined in Merriam-Webster as:

"...a structure, configuration, or pattern of physical, biological, or psychological phenomena so integrated as to constitute a functional unit with properties not derivable by summation of its parts."

Wholeness is not derivative. Nothing is left out; nothing added together. Wholeness is wholeness in the same way religious language asserts "God is God."

Is there an integral compass of authentic spiritual practice? Or are we experiencing 360 directions (or 10,000 doors) -- each his own formula, each her own expression -- with no integrating interconnective path back to union or communion?

The "point" here is that the compass of authentic spiritual practice, no matter which particular direction the indicator, is within itself not other than the wholeness of what is ground and "one-turning" (i.e. uni-verse) wherein each-in-all and all-in-each dwells as it is with no exclusion.

The point is not only the goal seen at the circumference of the compass dial. The "point" is not only a centripetal or centrifugal absolute center to the compass of spiritual vision. The "point" is "not only".

"Not only" means not only. The "point" is that which is in and of itself is the all encompassing.

The sorrow is a black and white cat just killed a Rosy Breasted Grosbeak at barn door.

The sorrow is Iraq:

BAGHDAD, June 28 — Twenty decapitated bodies were found today in a predominantly Sunni village southeast of Baghdad, Iraqi police said.

The grisly discovery was made on a bloody day across Iraq. A car bomb killed 25 people and wounded 40 others in a busy intersection in the mostly Shiite Bayaa district in Baghdad today. And the casualty count from an attack on Wednesday in Kadhimiya, another Shiite neighborhood, rose to 10 dead and 17 wounded.

In Basra, a roadside bomb killed three British soldiers and wounded another, Reuters reported.
(-- from The New York Times)

We miss the point.

Across the yard, a plaintive call for family, friend, and mate echoes in this sorrow.

Brings tears.

Often it's a difficulty of translation.

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.
- Morehei Ueshiba

Take the old definition from the Baltimore Catechism, re-translated:
Q: Why did God's creation bring us about?
A: God's creation brings us about to know one another, to love one another, and to serve one another in this world of time and human being, and to be happy with one another in God for the immediacy and eternity of all life of love itself.

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

God views the individual within the whole.
Humankind might someday come to view God as the whole.

The devil tells the individual he is all that counts.
God's voice says each individual within the whole counts.

When anger over egoistic exclusion threatens to break the whole into self-serving parts, be angry. Then, let it go.

Pray with whole heart, with whole mind, and with whole being -- pray that all shall be well. Christ serves well. Will we serve all with Christ?

Will all be well?

It will.

Be.

Wholly.

Well.

The old black and white Border Collie stands a long while looking up the trail to meditation cabin, then, slowly, eases himself down at foot of path just to the left of hanging bird feeder. It's a hot afternoon. I look out at him frequently. He's apt to wander toward the road these days -- his compass twirling ways unfamiliar.

Below the cliff, riding in a boat,
I think of climbing up.
The mountain temple is silent.
It seems to have no monks.
A falling star – a single dot
It is a beam of lamplight
From the Kannon Hall above.
- Ishikawa Jozan (1583-1672)

Walking the four miles to town earlier two dogs raced down their driveway snarling and barking as I went by on the other side of Hosmer Pond Road. They came half way across at me as I held up one hand and loudly shouted "STOP! NO! NO!" Had they not, had they not turned when they did, had the white pick-up truck not been a wee slow honking at their teeth, and had their master not risen from doldrums to call to them just as it was over -- my hand reaching back to folded steel in black case on belt. But all the 'nots' combined to keep walking with beads in hand and prayer in heart.

But we, Lord, are made the least of all nations.
Today we are brought low over all the earth
on account of our sins.

Today there is no prince
no prophet, no leader,
no holocaust, no sacrifice.
No offering, no incense,
no first-fruits offered to you
– no way to obtain your mercy.

But in our contrite souls,
in a spirit of humility,
accept us, Lord.
(--from Daniel 3)

I get mail from friend two decades quiet hoping the letter I wrote to a man I worry about results in fishing and conversation in the same waters.

I am satisfied with loft in cabin for morning sitting and then psalms. Solitude is a friendly silence. Red squirrel worried about me. No, today you eat!

Two poems

On a bridge over the Pace Freeway

a junkie held a knife to my throat

and said: your coat has many pockets.

I took it off very slowly,

the cars passing under me.

I was sure nothing could go wrong

while I was trying to help.

His voice was slurred

as if by great distance

but the blade was steady.

I began telling him. a story:

how I'd hitchhiked from Pueblo to Cheyenne

looking for work, and found a job

painting the white lines in the road.

I could feel the prick of the blade

against my adam's apple. I thought:

if you're telling this story,

you must live through it.

Somewhere there was a cricket.

The bridge rocked constantly.

He held the jacket between his legs,

extracted the billfold with one hand,

counted the money with a sidelong glance.

He nodded, as if there were a sum

I owed him, and moved back a step

to let me pass. Then I feared him:

I was no longer entirely at his mercy.

I waited. Traffic passed.

There were snatches of music

and voices telling the news.

I said I was waiting for a friend

who was to meet me at dawn.

He answered: there is no one,

but he'd begun to back away

with the coat under his arm,

ten steps between us, twenty,

and I was on the other side:

a street of shops that seemed miniature,

the lamps still lit though it was daylight.

In front of a shuttered grocery

someone had left hampers of milk and bread.

The silence was absolute.

On the grate of a cantina

there were signs for last year's dances.

The gaunt dogs, that; sniffed as they pleased,

flinched when they saw me, then caught my scent

and knew I had no power to hurt.

I walked through them as if on stilts.

I came to a phone and dialed a number.

There was a holding voice and music.

Another number: another voice, music.

I had no more change. I looked behind me.

I walked quickly past tiny houses.

I smelled toast and heard children arguing.

A sprinkler winced, despite the drought.

I could hear the clink of a tame dog '

moving on a chain, clearing its throat to bark.

I broke into a run. Already

I could hear the hum of the next huge road.

Immense Fires and Not Yet Summer

The face responsible for opinions

hasn't slept in three days,

the mouth in charge of facts

has begun to stutter.

The cloud that hides that city

is radiant and lights the room

where we watch, legs dangling

on the edge of an unmade bed.

I turn to tell you

"I foresaw this, so did you,

seeing this coming made us a couple."

Your finger is on your lips.

Your eyes are rapt, flares in reflection

cross your cheek like moods.

On the screen the armored personnel carriers

have arrived, already the shots sound

a split-second delayed, as if on a separate tape.

(-- Poem by D. Nurkse in The American Poetry Review, July 1995. http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3692/is_199507/ai_n8719029/pg_1)

Seeing this time coming makes us a couple. You and me. We've tried to be clear about what we see. But it all passes so slowly there's no grasping it. We have to live it through, without celluloid, without digital enhancement, without commentary.

We are our lives.

Every inch, every instant of it.

It is taken away by milliseconds and fabric edges peeling each strand from the fray.

I am not the name I've answered to all these years.

The old dog is...still...looking up the path...a single dot.

Seen from a small, irretrievable, not.

We need a new view.

The mayor of Salt Lake City, Utah, Ross C. "Rocky" Anderson, speaks to Amy Goodman about his feeling that George Bush and Dick Cheney should be impeached. He is ashamed of his Democratic Party for taking impeachment off the table. He says someone down the road has to know that the American people deeply felt at the time that the practices and tactics of this administration were wrong and dangerous.

We've got to end this war.

First, we've got to change the language used by this administration to describe the war. Glenn Greenwald in his book, A Tragic Legacy: How a Good vs. Evil Mentality Destroyed the Bush Presidency, writes:

Because the threat posed by The Evil Terrorists is so grave, maximizing protections against it is the paramount, overriding goal. No other value competes with that objective, nor can any other value limit our efforts to protect ourselves against The Terrorists.

That is the essence of virtually every argument Bush supporters make regarding terrorism. No matter what objection is raised to the never-ending expansions of executive power, no matter what competing values are touted (due process, the rule of law, the principles our country embodies, how we are perceived around the world), the response will always be that The Terrorists are waging war against us and our overarching priority — one that overrides all others — is to protect ourselves, to triumph over Evil. By definition, then, there can never be any good reason to oppose vesting powers in the government to protect us from The Terrorists because that goal outweighs all others.

But our entire system of government, from its inception, has been based upon a very different calculus — that is, that many things matter besides merely protecting ourselves against threats, and consequently, we are willing to accept risks, even potentially fatal ones, in order to secure those other values. From its founding, America has rejected the worldview of prioritizing physical safety above all else, as such a mentality leads to an impoverished and empty civic life. The premise of America is and always has been that imposing limitations on government power is necessary to secure liberty and avoid tyranny even if it means accepting an increased risk of death as a result. That is the foundational American value.

It is this courageous demand for core liberties even if such liberties provide less than maximum protection from physical risks that has made America bold, brave, and free. Societies driven exclusively or primarily by a fear of avoiding Evil, minimizing risks, and seeking above all else that our government “protects” us are not free. That is a path that inevitably leads to authoritarianism — an increasingly strong and empowered leader in whom the citizens vest ever-increasing faith and power in exchange for promises of safety. That is most assuredly not the historical ethos of the United States.
(--Glenn Greenwald, in A Tragic Legacy: How a Good vs. Evil Mentality Destroyed the Bush Presidency.)

One commentator adds to Greenwald:
No, it is not. Greenwald has written a book that finally gets to the meat of the matter and addresses the underlying error that has led inexorably to all the errors that followed. The Bush administration took a simplistic, Manichean, “good vs evil” approach to the threat of Islamic terrorism, and in that one act handed them a victory. One of the great advances of our civilization is the recognition that the line between good and evil is not between one group and another group; the line between good and evil lies inside every human being. All it took was a handful of religious fanatics with a willingness to commit suicide to make an awful lot of Americans forget that.
(--Digby, blogger at http://www.firedoglake.com/2007/06/24/fdl-book-salon-welcomes-glenn-greenwald/#more-9918)

While politicians bob and weave through sensitive deliberations about their personal political careers, there is a massive problem they are reluctant to address -- self-deception.

When any individual refuses to face the universal inner tension of good/evil at core of each one of us, there is a blindness that occurs. In that blindness there also occurs a projection outward of resentment and hatred of that part of each one of us that we refuse to acknowledge as us. This projection hurls anger and righteous revenge on any object, entity, or person made into the opposite, the enemy, the "other."

The simplistic and self-deceiving language used by Messrs Bush and Cheney has occasioned a time in the history of America that will take its place as one of the ugliest times. We have tortured the innocent, killed irresponsibly, spied on our own, denied legal rights, punished dissenters, invaded a sovereign country illegally for false reasons, kept secret and hidden matters vital to oversight by duly legislated and elected American officials, deceptively presented erroneous data to international regulating bodies used to justify our bellicose actions, and, unambiguously sullied the reputation and good will of the United States all across the globe.

These and additional actions, taken in what appears to be febrile fixation with unregulated and uncontained power isolated in the Executive Branch, have all the earmarks of a coup d'etat done in plain sight with seeming complicity of the American public.

Han shan reminds us of an alternative way to cool the flames of anger in the face of such combustible evidence:

As for me, I delight
In the everyday Way,
Among mist-wrapped vines
And rocky caves.
Here in the wilderness
I am completely free,
With my friends,
The white clouds,
Idling forever.
There are roads,
But they do not reach the world;
Since I am mindless,
Who can rouse my thoughts?
On a bed of stone I sit,
Alone in the night,
While the round moon
Climbs up Cold Mountain.
- Han shan ( 8th century)

He's right, of course. That doesn't diminish the feelings of impotence and upset. Injustices continue to be promulgated in my name. It causes profound discomfort and illness of spirit.

There are many who claim when there's a mean, dangerous, and harmful presence outside your door the best strategy is to hunker down in a closet deep in the unused section of your dwelling. They might be right. Perhaps it's time to contemplate my own good/evil in the quiet suffering of solitude. When that is done, these people will still have to be confronted. But the possibility exists that I will no longer do what they are doing, will no longer demonize them and shout at the wind.

I will have to face the person I am. I will have to face who you are. I will have to face God. And God is, as you know, not other than what God is in you and me.

No blaming God. No blaming you. No blaming me.

Choices

I go to the mountain side
of the house to cut saplings,
and clear a view to snow
on the mountain. But when I look up,
saw in hand, I see a nest clutched in
the uppermost branches.
I don't cut that one.
I don't cut the others either.
Suddenly, in every tree,
an unseen nest
where a mountain
would be.

for Drago Stambuk (--Poem: "Choices" by Tess Gallagher, from Dear Ghosts. Graywolf Press, 2006.)

Look up!

Mountain wisdom and sobriety give pause. There's more there than meets the eye.

Nests proliferate everywhere unseen and simply given to offspring learning to breathe and opening eyes to light that eases darkness from sky perduring the circular yin/yang, the ebb and flow of awareness through ignorance to consciousness itself.

Consciousness as itself.

We are not desolate.

Something new.

Comes to be.

There.

And here.

With you.

With me.

Coming.

To.

See?

How strange to have depiction of a capital punishment as primary symbol in prominent view! Something about the crucifix over the alter at St Francis of Assisi Church in Belfast this morning caught my attention. Why is that corpus on the cross?

Only one who bursts with
Enthusiasm do I instruct;
Only one who bubbles with
Excitement do I enlighten.
If I hold up one corner
And you do not come back
To me with the other three,
I do not continue the lesson.
- Confucius

I can barely find one corner, much less lift it and bring it back. In fact, these days, I am hiding lost under a pebble on which a corner of some four-square fabric finds itself thrown. Or, maybe, some revelation is at hand -- similar to the one Yeats wondered about. What that might be, I don't know.

"All that matters is how we go through this life -- completely free of ulterior motives, letting God have his way, obeying what happens as a manifestation of his will. If you don't try to set things up, that's what you'll see."

"A moment comes when because of the simple daily life, you reach a point where you have to say you're willing to let the real person live this life and the 'show' person has to go. It's painful. You have to be willing to say, 'I'm weak and vulnerable.' And you realize that everyone is going to see you like that. You're going to stand naked. But you also know as sure as you exist that these guys will accept you as you are -- real weak, vulnerable."
(--Trappist monk Dan to visiting journalist Frank, p.154, in Voices of Silence, Lives of the Trappists Today, by Frank Bianco)

The body is there because it is the instant of transition when life/death and the mystery of transformation/transcendence is occurring right there and then.

The director of the film Etre et Avoir (2002) says in an interview that to grow up is to learn to leave things behind, to go on without them.

But with the image of this man Jesus on the cross, it is the instant of non-differentiation. He is one and the other -- alive and dead and gone beyond. To say "It is finished; It is completed" and go on, letting go, leaving the once-was for the to-be-as-is becomes the most difficult learning experience we are ever invited into.

It's not a show. It's us. Our life.

It's a go.

Going.

Beyond.

Completely.

Awake(?)

(Good luck!)