Life before language, and life during language, is what silence is...
revealing.

Utter emptiness has no image,
Upright independence does not rely on anything.
Just expand and illuminate the original truth
Unconcerned by external conditions.
- Hongzhi Zhengjue (1091–1157)

Charles Simic is current Poet Laureate in US. Poetry helps. Poetry is leaf-shadow on breezy Sunday afternoon. On porch of meditation cabin. "Stone" is one of his poems.

STONE

Go inside a stone
That would be my way.
Let somebody else become a dove
Or gnash with a tiger's tooth.
I am happy to be a stone.

From the outside the stone is a riddle:
No one knows how to answer it.
Yet within, it must be cool and quiet
Even though a cow steps on it full weight,
Even though a child throws it in a river;
The stone sinks, slow, unperturbed
To the river bottom
Where the fishes come to knock on it
And listen.

I have seen sparks fly out
When two stones are rubbed,
So perhaps it is not dark inside after all;
Perhaps there is a moon shining
From somewhere, as though behind a hill--
Just enough light to make out
The strange writings, the star-charts
On the inner walls.
(--Poem by Charles Simic)

The man and woman on New Dimensions Radio this morning were talking about how, evolutionarily, we are stardust. They refer to Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and Thomas Berry -- The universe travels on through us. We are its knowing. We are the universe knowing itself. We are meant to celebrate what we are.

This is who we are. We grow from the earth as the earth with all that we discover to be of the earth. Even Jesus, as the Christ, as we say, came through woman to dwell on earth as earth and for the earth. Everything, says Teilhard, is redeemed and saved from exclusion and bitter separation. Not even what many call "G-d" or God is excluded. What we call "God" might be the entirety of what is, the wholeness without exception, or, the Pleroma -- Alpha and Omega -- beyond which there is no further beyond.

Cesco stretches beside cabin. If I've claimed repair and not opened the shop, (he exudes), then a long (slow) walk is the order of the day. We will, (he exhibits in abundance), celebrate the earth by traversing its wondrous trails along mountainside. For, (he continues), soon I will die and walk no more the earth. Rather, I will become the earth in a different, more intimate, inseparate yet unmoving-as-other, way.

Humidity has broken. What is broken in me undergoes repair. Silence knits itself through every cell and atom. We are saved from hostile negative by balancing loving affirmative.

I shall pour clean water over you and you will be cleansed; I shall cleanse you of all your defilement and all your idols. I shall give you a new heart, and put a new spirit in you; I shall remove the heart of stone from your bodies and give you a heart of flesh instead. I shall put my spirit in you, and make you keep my laws and sincerely respect my observances.
(--Ezekiel 36:25 - 27, Reading in Lauds {Morning Prayer})

In 1977, in a house in the Village of Suffern shared by friends, I first read these stanzas from Simic's poem "Breasts."

I insist that a girl
Stripped to the waist
Is the first and last miracle,

That the old janitor on his deathbed
who demands to see the breasts of his wife
For one last time
Is the greatest poet who ever lived.

I'm glad he wrote that. I'm glad he is poet laureate. I'm glad he made the acquaintance of silence.

In the interview with the literary journal Crazy Horse, which took place in the summer of 1972, five years after he published his first book of poetry, What the Grass Says (1976), Charles Simic describes poetry as an "orphan of silence" (The Uncertain Certainty: Interviews, Essays, and Notes on Poetry, Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Press, 1985. UC 5).
Silence, solitude, what is more essential to the human condition? ‘Maternal silence’ is what I like to call it. Life before the coming of language. That place where we begin to hear the voice of the inanimate. Poetry is an orphan of silence. The words never quite equal the experience behind them. (UC 5-6)
(-- from Orphan of Silence: The Poetry of Charles Simic, By Goran Mijuk, Doctoral Dissertation, University of Fribourg, February 1, 2002, at http://ethesis.unifr.ch/theses/downloads.php?file=MijukG.pdf)

What is life before the coming of language? It is always now. It is always the source resounding noiselessly within you and me, within everything.

I'm also glad things are falling to earth. The run of divine awayness is coming to its end. The esteemed actors and authors who proclaimed a vague, otherly, and unreachable temple and template of heavenly abstruseness are exiting the theater, retiring to off, off, off the narrow-way. The broad-way, the fantastically open, transfigures our minds and imagination. Something new is in-deed happening.

"Behold, the former things are come to pass, and new things do I declare: before they spring forth I tell you of them."
(--Isaiah 42:9)

Words are abandoning former enslaving owners and have taken to the open road, disrobing the uniforms forced upon them, and shaking loose from formulas and oaths recited under duress and drugs. Words are taking bodies beyond themselves, shucking false selves, shunting to a span of tracks disappearing into infinity where no tracks proscribe their direction.

Poets know this.

Lovers of words and silence feel this.

"Words make love on the page like flies in the summer heat," Charles Simic writes in his memoir, A Fly In The Soup. Or here is Fernando Pessoa in a journal entry:" I enjoy wording. Words for me are tangible bodies, visible sirens, incarnate sensualities." Roland Barthes describes this same erotics of language in A Lover's Discourse: "Language is a skin:I rub my language against the other. It is as if I had words instead of fingers, or fingers at the tips of my words. My language trembles with desire. The emotion derives from a double contact:on the one hand, a whole activity of discourse discreetly, indirectly focuses upon a single signified, which is 'I desire you,' and releases, nourishes, ramifies it to the point of explosion (language experiences orgasm upon touching itself); on the other hand I enwrap the other in my words, I caress, brush up against, talk up this contact, I extend myself to make the commentary to which I submit the relation endure." Language moves from the skin to all that is beyond it. Gaston Bachelard says in The Poetics of Space :"the reader of poems is asked to consider an image not as an object and even less as a substitute for an object, but to seize its specific reality." That is, the reality of words themselves. For him, this is an area where the "margin" of unreality enters and perturbs us, wakens us--our words suddenly sound strange, like a word we repeat to ourselves over and over again will sound strange, as if it had a life of its own. He says in The Poetics of Reverie : "I am a dreamer of words, of written words. I think I am reading; a word stops me. I leave the page. The syllables of the word begin to move around. Stressed accents begin to invert. The word abandons its meaning like an overload which is too heavy and prevents dreaming. The words take on other meanings as if they had the right to be young." It's language, after all, which allows us to presence the absent. For Bachelard, everything is at stake, possibly, in every word. It creates an effect he calls "intimate immensity," a sense of everything in every little thing, Blake's "infinity in a grain of sand," or "eternity in an hour." The erotics of language, in paying so much attention to the skin, the border between word and thing, poem and world, extends outwards and creates its own world. The poet becomes like both the lover and the beloved in Song Of Songs where the intensely erotic language not only expresses desire but creates a world for that desire to flourish within:when the beloved's neck is described as a tower, or her cheek like half of a pomegranate, the poet starts to bring in countryside and city, and then fills that out with references to cedars, cypresses, various spices, jewels, hillsides, sheep, palm trees, flowers of various sorts and so on. In the dialogue of the poem the call of one to the other is also a call of city to country and country to city, an attempt by each to capture the other in the song itself which becomes the very world, the vineyard itself.
(-- from EROS AND THE EROTICS OF WRITING, AWP Meeting, April, 2001, by Richard Jackson, at http://www.utc.edu/Academic/English/pm/eros.html)

Cesco still waits. He has, no doubt, dozed off again. He is doze and deze. He walks when walking occurs, eats when eating occurs, sleeps when sleeping occurs. For those of us his students, we have to mindfully practice these teachings.

Life before, during, and without language is our practice hall.

Cesco no longer bow-wows, but I bow deeply to him.

We are orphans and children of orphans.

A...

Silencing.

Within.

Itself.

I've been listening to the words spoken about the administration in Washington, about the fears the current administration will not follow the rule of law and that their worst is yet to come, about American children being the angriest and most medicated kids in the world.

I've read articles about entropic decay in Iraq. Entropy swirls in America in the three US branches of government, in most of our pop-culture.

I've been told many theories. Some by far right supporters of the men in Washington, some by conservative supporters of the Constitution, some by liberal proponents of impeachment. It all seems, at best, difficult.

I'm concerned. More than that, noise and cynicism grow very loud.

Let’s go silent.

Let’s go stand in silence — no silly chants, no fatalistic “We deserve them,” and no pleading with Congress members.

Let’s put our bodies where words have failed.

Let’s remember embodiment and incarnation, mere being and presence.

Let’s go stand…anywhere…in silence, sign-less and anonymous, and wordlessly look within.

Let’s find out where truth waits noiselessly.

What do you (don’t) say?

Let's not, a while.

Though night after night
The moon is stream-reflected,
Try to find where it has touched,
Point even to a shadow.
- Takuan (1573–1645)

Let's while a way.

Let's unknot this.

While away.

A woman frets over signing a lease for doing energy and writing work. She eats a spinach croissant. All the signs are right, she says, then goes to do the deed.

Alone in mountain fastness,
Dozing by the window.
No mere talk uncovers Truth:
The fragrance of those garden plums!
- Bankei (1622–1693)

Two squash from Curtis Island sat together overnight on bakery case. One decided to go home with a woman who rows daily around the island.

The hot weather brings out irritation of opinion from some of the cranky irregulars. By the time I return from letting dog out at Ragged Mtn, one of them admits they've been bad. They spill out the door, the last one calling up to where I sit, saying goodbye. They've exhausted themselves lifting their opinions of this one or that one over the proverbial top. The room is empty. Gregorian chant plays.

Actions, Actions, Actions
Beings are owners of their actions. . . heirs of their actions; they originate from their actions, are bound to their actions, have their actions as their refuge. It is action that distinguishes beings as inferior and superior.
--Culakammavibhanga Sutta

At prison today, three good conversations in three places. One man says it is only our acts that make us solid. Words and promises are see-throughs and slip-throughs. Acts are seen, felt, and stand on their own as evidence of someone presenting himself/herself.

In Belfast Bo Lozoff talks at the Universalist Unitarian Church. He'll do workshops tomorrow at the prison. At end of the evening a massive thunder and lightning storm knocks the lights out for 15 minutes. He leads song, Knocking on Heaven's Door, and all ends well.

Cesco came through the storm with subdued alarm. His mistress is away. He suffers my brand of care.

To the door. Out. I go out and he comes back. To the door. Out. Walk up to brook with flashlight. He gets lost returning. Back in. To the door. Out. Soon I'll get him back in.

I have called to you, Lord, all the day;
I have stretched out my hands to you.
(-- from Psalm 88)

Heavy eyelids.

Too many cookies.

We wonder about one another. Is she well? Is he ok? What will happen?

It's a nice thing to do. In the Course in Miracles this evening the final circle was asked their responses to "I place the future in God's hands."

The Way of heaven is silent,
It has no appearance, no pattern.
It is so vast that its
Limit cannot be reached;
It is so deep that it
Cannot be fathomed.
It is always evolving
Along with people,
But knowledge cannot grasp it.
It turns like a wheel,
Beginninglessly and endlessly,
Effective as a spirit.
Open and empty,
It goes along with the flow,
Always coming afterward
And never in the forefront
- Lao- tzu

Faces come in from years ago. Names are connected. We're well, thank you. And you?

This is what we do in this life -- we inquire after one another. It doesn't matter what the response -- we're all just fine, and someday we'll die. No surprises there.

We live our lives with profound trust. However we understand the reality or notion of God, the fact is our lives are in the hands of one another. If we consider carefully, we come to see that our lives are in the hands of one another.

Thus says the Lord: With heaven my throne and earth my footstool, what house could you build me, what place could you make for my rest? All of this was made by my hand and all of this is mine – it is the Lord who speaks. But my eyes are drawn to the man of humbled and contrite spirit, who trembles at my word.
--(Isaiah 66:1 - 2)

And so, I ask you: How are you? Are you well? And when you die, you will be well, as all shall be.

There.

We've done it.

Our lives.

Hermitage Update Summer 2007; Events at Meetingbrook, Summer 2007

Note: There has been a delay posting Update and Events in their normal places on the website. For Summer 2007 Hermitage Update, and Events at Meetingbrook, please see Today at Meetingbrook, Sunday, May 20, 2007
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or, here:

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 came to Maine. Summer follows. Last patches of snow drew 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 becomes itself. The more we change the more we remain in the itself. Is God the 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 have also embarked on MC's and ILC's in the closed unit protective custody. We are also embarking on 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, the bookshop and bakery continues on 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 hito, that is, 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, everyone 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,

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

(In memoriam, Katherine)

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

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 Eternal Echoes by John O'Donohue. 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 own 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 --11:00am.
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

...


* Stop Pretending
The great teachings unanimously emphasize that all the peace, wisdom, and joy in the universe are already within us; we don't have to gain, develop, or attain them. Like a child standing in a beautiful park with his eyes shut tight, there's no need to imagine trees, flowers, deer, birds and sky; we merely need to open our eyes and realize what is already here, who we already are--as soon as we stop pretending we're small or unholy. I could characterize nearly any spiritual practice as simply being: identify and stop, identify and stop, identify and stop. Identify the myriad forms of delusion we place upon ourselves, and must the courage to stop each one. Little by little deep inside us, he diamond shines, the eyes open, the dawn rises, we become what we already are. Tat Twam Asi (Thou Art That).
( -- Bo Lozoff, from 365 Nirvana, Here and Now by Josh Baran)



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Many people call themselves a recovering Catholic. Some are returning Catholics. I've never left. And no 12 step program tempts.

No one really knows
The nature of birth
Nor the true dwelling place.
We return to the source
And turn to dust.
- Ikkyu (1394-1481)

No one ever leaves the source. We just forget where we are.

Be holy in all you do, since it is the Holy One who has called you, and scripture says: Be holy, for I am holy.
-- 1 Peter 1:15 - 16

One is holy.

Be that.

Dead mouse in front room. Cat stretches on dog's rug -- who'd moved to middle room, no doubt, during drama in front room. Both cat and corpus go out front door, one on his own, the other by hand. July morning damp with dew and mildewing mugginess.

See The Flower
One day the Buddha held up a flower in front of an audience of 1,250 monks and nuns. He did not say anything for quite a long time. The audience was perfectly silent. Everyone seemed to be thinking hard, trying to see the meaning behind the Buddha's gesture. Then, suddenly, the Buddha smiled. He smiled because someone in the audience smiled at him and at the flower. . . . To me the meaning is quite simple. When someone holds up a flower and shows it to you, he wants you to see it. If you keep thinking, you miss the flower. The person who was not thinking, who was just himself, was able to encounter the flower in depth, and he smiled. That is the problem of life. If we are not fully ourselves, truly in the present moment, we miss everything.
--Thich Nhat Hanh

We're meant to be just ourselves, able to encounter what is there, with cheer.

Is this "foolishness with God" what Paul talks about?

18. Let no one deceive himself. If anyone among you seems to be wise in this age, let him become a fool that he may become wise.
19. For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God. For it is written, “He catches the wise in their own craftiness”;[Job 5:13]
20. and again, “The LORD knows the thoughts of the wise, that they are futile.”[Psalm 94: 11]
21. Therefore let no one boast in men. For all things are yours:
22. whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas, or the world or life or death, or things present or things to come — all are yours.
23. And you are Christ’s, and Christ is God’s.
--1 Corinthians 3:10-23 (New King James Version)

To be wise in this world is "foolishness with God." Things present and things to come are the Christ's, and Christ is God's, and we are deep in this foolishness -- attuned, awake, and attentive.

This is the new monasticism -- outside and in the open, adoring and chanting the reality of what is -- with loving, joyful, serving attention.

It is nephew Mark's birthday, in Brooklyn, in 1979 as we waited at 1914-69th street. It's also the feast of Inigo de Loyola, born in 1491 in Azpeitia in the Basque province of Guipuzcoa in northern Spain.

The Experience of Manresa

He continued towards Barcelona but stopped along the river Cardoner at a town called Manresa. He stayed in a cave outside the town, intending to linger only a few days, but he remained for ten months. He spent hours each day in prayer and also worked in a hospice. It was while here that the ideas for what are now known as the Spiritual Exercises began to take shape. It was also on the banks of this river that he had a vision which is regarded as the most significant in his life. The vision was more of an enlightenment, about which he later said that he learned more on that one occasion than he did in the rest of his life. Ignatius never revealed exactly what the vision was, but it seems to have been an encounter with God as He really is so that all creation was seen in a new light and acquired a new meaning and relevance, an experience that enabled Ignatius to find God in all things. This grace, finding God in all things, is one of the central characteristics of Jesuit spirituality.
Ignatius himself never wrote in the rules of the Jesuits that there should be any fixed time for prayer. Actually, by finding God in all things, all times are times of prayer. He did not, of course, exclude formal prayer, but he differed from other founders regarding the imposition of definite times or duration of prayer. One of the reasons some opposed the formation of the Society of Jesus was that Ignatius proposed doing away with the chanting of the Divine Office in choir. This was a radical departure from custom, because until this time, every religious order was held to the recitation of the office in common. For Ignatius, such recitation meant that the type of activity envisioned for the Society would be hindered.
--from The Life of St. Ignatius of Loyola, by Rev. Norman O'Neal, S.J.

New light, new meaning, new relevance.

God in all things.

Fully ourselves.

Dooryard dew.

Red geraniums.

Nice flowers!

Something new is taking place. Everyone senses it. Some deny their senses. A sound. Can we hear it?

However deep your
Knowledge of the scriptures,
It is no more than a strand of hair
In the vastness of space;
However important seeming
Your worldly experience,
It is but a drop of water in a deep ravine.
- Tokusan

Rowing Rockport Harbor just before start of rain. Oars in oarlocks lifting and pulling, turning and dipping.

There's a lovely boat on one of the islands trying to decide if it has a meetingbrook vocation. There's no telling. Only listening.

Walking with Cesco in the rain at Snow Bowl, the rich fragrance of sweet summer water!

Anything becoming part of meetingbrook would engage the practice of collegiality.

"Some say that only the Pope has universal jurisdiction in the Church, and that the jurisdiction of the Bishops proceeds from him. In my opinion, this thesis is absolutely unacceptable. It has the advantage of being simple and coherent, but it turns its back on many texts and facts of early Christianity.

"In the opposite sense, there is the thesis that affirms the power in the Church, even the power of the Pope, would always be collegial. The Pope would always act as 'head of the College.' He could not act by his own power as 'Vicar of Christ' (I place the last words between quotation marks because I am not comfortable with this expression, which I personally avoid using). ...."I am strongly favorable to a collegial power that can be exercised by the College of Bishops as well as by the Pope himself as its head, representing the whole body."
(Yves Congar, une vie pour la verite, Jean Puyo Interroge le Pere Congar, Paris: Centurion, 1975, pp. 209-210).

Even the church must practice.

An inquiry into God ("con" "gar") is an evening's gift, is eve's very life.

So it is, we look over the water, look out into space. We are marked by camaraderie among colleagues.

An eve's practice.

Listen!

A death-knell is sounding. Compassion is all ears. Failure to engage the hospice patient leaves a bitter, lonely, and despondent atmosphere hanging over the assembled.

The power to impeach stands mute staring at a heedless and sneering attitude of the president and vice president who do not respect nor follow the rule of law in America.

The American people are rightfully frightened of this pattern and trend.

The Constitution of the United States stands behind the mute and staring power of impeachment. Both are looking at the elected representatives of the people of this land. These representatives stand frozen in fear, gazing at their political future and fortunes.

No one is being served. Except, fear. Fear is the only focus of eyes too frightened to take a step to do the right thing, to exercise the power demanded by the Constitution, filtered through elected representatives, serving laws that the people of this land -- all the people -- are served by and accountable to.

# Interbeing and Universal Responsibility
In Mahayana Buddhism in particular great emphasis is laid on realizing the union of wisdom and compassionate action. Human fulfillment is seen to lie in the integration of the inner and outer dimensions of life, not in transcendent wisdom or world-saving compassion alone. As long as we remain delusively convinced of our egoic separation, then we remain cut off from the capacity to empathize fully with others. Such empathy is nothing other than the affective response to insight into the absence of egoic separation. For when the fiction of isolated selfhood is exposed, instead of a gaping mystical void we discover that our individual existence is rooted in relationship with the rest of life. For Thich Nhat Hanh, this is the realization of "interbeing"; for the Dalai Lama that of "universal responsibility": two ideas at the heart of contemporary Engaged Buddhism.
--Stephen Batchelor

It's somehow easier to live with the idea, however fictional, we are isolated selves, separated and detached from one another. This fiction feels familiar -- the anger, the jealousy, the resentments.

Bill Moyers gets perspective on the role of impeachment in American political life from Constitutional scholar Bruce Fein, who wrote the first article of impeachment against President Bill Clinton, and THE NATION's John Nichols, author of THE GENIUS OF IMPEACHMENT.

"The founding fathers expected an executive who tried to overreach and expected the executive would be hampered and curtailed by the legislative branch... They [Congress] have basically renounced — walked away from their responsibility to oversee and check." — Bruce Fein

"On January 20th, 2009, if George Bush and Dick Cheney are not appropriately held to account this Administration will hand off a toolbox with more powers than any President has ever had, more powers than the founders could have imagined. And that box may be handed to Hillary Clinton or it may be handed to Mitt Romney or Barack Obama or someone else. But whoever gets it, one of the things we know about power is that people don't give away the tools." — John Nichols
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/07132007/profile.html

Can you hear it? The knelling continues.

It feels odd to consider that men in such high office of trust are possibly instruments of treachery and ill will. No one wants to believe that.

That's the problem with belief.

It might have nothing to do with actual fact.

There are three things we must do to transcend belief and accompanying paralysis:

The first is vital -- listen. So too, the second is utmost -- listen.

And as the first, and second, the third task is a powerful and irreplaceable one -- listen!

Without belief, listening is.

Once again.

Radical grace.

Kids out on the deck play a game, chanting, "We're following the leader, the leader, the leader; we're following the leader wherever she may go." They are laughing, and tiring as evening fog comes in over harbor.

Refreshing, the wind against the waterfall;
The moon hangs a lantern on the peak,
And the bamboo window glows.
In old age mountains
Are more beautiful than ever.
My resolve:
That these bones be purified by rocks.
- Jakushitsu (14th century)

A young man from Austin Texas brings up a book asking how much it is. We look it up. "No Pluckier Set of Men Anywhere, The Story of Ships and Men in Damariscotta and Newcastle, Maine." It had originally been twenty five dollars, but now was either 35, 45, or 90 depending which website checked. Amazon is going to the high end. And we have two. So we discuss the ins and outs of pricing and selling. His mom is in the store, then leaves. His dad and I chat about the heat in Texas. The lad was born in 1996. That's when we got these two copies into the store, I tell him.

There's so much to consider.

WIE: In your book, The Mystic Heart, you write about how deep mystical experience will engender the depth of care and perspective that will enable us to truly respond to the crisis facing the world, to the needs of the whole. Can you speak about the relationship between mystical experience and the arising of compassion?

WT: Well, in my experience in the mystical life, I find myself becoming more and more aware of the Source as "inherently warmhearted." The vast consciousness that is the Divine is not a cold analytical intelligence—it emanates from its very core a concern. Heidegger said that the essence of being is concern, and this is what many of the traditions have tried to communicate, even the Buddhist tradition. The Buddha said that once a person lets go of the focus on self-interest, then they see that all is emptiness and all is compassion. And that compassion, that ultimate concern that Heidegger is talking about, that "agapic" or selfless love, is the connectivity of all sentient beings. It's the glue that holds it all together.
(--from Transforming the Seeds of Corruption, An interview with Brother Wayne Teasdale, by Amy Edelstein, in What is Enlightenment magazine.)

Selfless love, I suspect, is a trick phrase. But what if it means what it says? What if "selfless love" means we need to dissolve and evacuate self, become self-less in order to engage with love as it is in itself?

The leader/followers vanish with darkness. I straighten chairs and take in Karuna Arts flags from deck.

Earlier a French Horn player with the Metropolitan Opera sat, spoke, and laughed about things Manhattan and Maine. He felt at home. On vacation, sans horn. I offered him my kazoo. He demurred.

Now it's late. Charlie and Dorothea drop in with visitors. Nawang Khechog's Tibetan meditation music plays.

These bones.

As selfless.

A purity, a glue holding.

All.

Together.

When the man-down announcement came over the loudspeaker, one of the men said they'd be back in 5 minutes. Saskia and I sat in the middle of the pod day room as 60 men stepped inside their cells and the doors shut and locked.

There we stay, conversation paused, in the middle of protective custody pod in maximum security prison.

This cold night bamboos stir,
Their sound- now harsh, now soft
Sweeps through the lattice window.
Though ear’s no match for mind,
What need, by lamplight,
Of a single Scripture leaf?
- Kido

It's only conversation. About this and that. Just us and whatever men stop by the table. Three this morning in Close A. Then six at Buddhist group in Activities Building. Finally three at the regular conversation in Tony's tutoring room.

It's just a gift we give one another.

Conversing.

Of this.

And that.

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.