Understanding belongs to the collective. There is no private understanding. When we understand anything it belongs to everyone. And don't mention secrets. More ill and wrong hides in the seduction of secrecy than anywhere else.

Make no mistake about it; if you do not find it now, you will repeat the same routines for myriad eons, a thousand times over again, following and picking up on objects that attract you. We are no different from Shakyamuni Buddha. Today, in your various activities, what do you lack? The spiritual light coursing through your six senses has never been interrupted. If you can see in this way, you will simply be free of burdens all your life.
(--Lin Chi, d 867?)

If.

You can see.

In this way.

Teilhard refers to "Centeredness" as a characteristic of the universe on all levels. Each corpuscle of matter has a centre "within", its principle of organisation. The more complex the being, the greater degree of centreity. Teilhard teaches that Centreity is the true, absolute measure of being in the beings that surround us, and the only basis for a truely natural classification of the elements of the universe. The axis of evolution stretches from the lowest degree of centreity to the highest, and entities having the same degree of centreity constitute "isopheres", forming universal units of the same type of being. So pre-living entities are ordered on Earth in the lithosphere, the hydrosphere, and the atmosphere. Organic beings make up the biosphere, and thinking entities (which in Teilhard's system solely means man) the noosphere. When ranked in their natural order, the whole family of isopheres will define at the heart of the system a focus-point of universal synthesis, the Centre of centres, Omega [Activation of Energy, pp.10-13, 102; Beatrice Bruteau, Evolution towards Divinity, p.138]
(--from , Teilhard de Chardin's Evolutionary Philososophy http://www.kheper.net/topics/Teilhard/Teilhard-evolution.htm)

It is a common flaw in our thinking to appropriate the divine to individual possession -- I am saved, God loves me, You are damned, I have the truth, Me me me.
I suspect divinity sips tea alone in a cafe, head shaking at the spectacle of absurd pronouncements of ownership and domination, forever waiting to be recognized as free gift for one and all -- one in all.

Reconciliation

Word over all, beautiful as the sky!
Beautiful that war, and all its deeds of carnage, must in time be utterly
lost;
That the hands of the sisters Death and Night, incessantly softly
wash again, and ever again, this soil'd world:
... For my enemy is
dead--a man divine as myself is dead;
I look where he lies, white-faced and
still, in the coffin--I draw near;
I bend down, and touch lightly with my
lips the white face in the coffin.
(--Poem by Walt Whitman)

I look at the corner table.

Where's the one who sat there?

What is there to understand?

That.

I have not.

Seen.

Yet.

The one not separate from reality is the one capable of unifying opposites.

The Canticle of the Sun
by Francis of Assisi

Most high, all powerful, all good Lord! All praise is yours, all glory, all honor, and all blessing. To you, alone, Most High, do they belong. No mortal lips are worthy to pronounce your name.
Be praised, my Lord, through all your creatures, especially through my lord Brother Sun, who brings the day; and you give light through him. And he is beautiful and radiant in all his splendor! Of you, Most High, he bears the likeness.
Be praised, my Lord, through Sister Moon and the stars; in the heavens you have made them, precious and beautiful.
Be praised, my Lord, through Brothers Wind and Air, and clouds and storms, and all the weather, through which you give your creatures sustenance.
Be praised, My Lord, through Sister Water; she is very useful, and humble, and precious, and pure.
Be praised, my Lord, through Brother Fire, through whom you brighten the night. He is beautiful and cheerful, and powerful and strong.
Be praised, my Lord, through our sister Mother Earth, who feeds us and rules us, and produces various fruits with colored flowers and herbs.
Be praised, my Lord, through those who forgive for love of you; through those who endure sickness and trial. Happy those who endure in peace, for by you, Most High, they will be crowned.
Be praised, my Lord, through our Sister Bodily Death, from whose embrace no living person can escape. Woe to those who die in mortal sin! Happy those she finds doing your most holy will. The second death can do no harm to them.
Praise and bless my Lord, and give thanks, and serve him with great humility.
(Poem/Canticle by Giovanni Bernardone -- Francis of Assisi, 1181-1226)
(translated by Bill Barrett from the Umbrian text of the Assisi codex.)

We like Francis.

St. Francis And The Sow

The bud
stands for all things,
even those things that don't flower,
for everything flowers, from within, of self-blessing;
though sometimes it is necessary
to reteach a thing its loveliness,
to put a hand on its brow
of the flower
and retell it in words and in touch
it is lovely
until it flowers again from within, of self-blessing;
as St. Francis
put his hand on the creased forehead
of the sow, and told her in words and in touch
blessings of earth on the sow, and the sow
began remembering all down her thick length,
from the earthen snout all the way
through the fodder and slops to the spiritual curl of
the tail,
from the hard spininess spiked out from the spine
down through the great broken heart
to the blue milken dreaminess spurting and shuddering
from the fourteen teats into the fourteen mouths sucking
and blowing beneath them:
the long, perfect loveliness of sow.
(--Poem by Galway Kinnell)

It's his feastday. It's an opportunity to learn.

He reteaches us loveliness.

Transitus.

From here.

To here.

To shake off the
Dust of human ambition
I sit on moss in
Zen robes of stillness,
While through the window,
In the setting sun
Of late autumn,
Falling leaves whirl
And drop to the stone dais.
- Tesshu Tokusai (?–1366)

Francis falling.

Through Francis.

Into Francis.

Not much for joining. Thus, never leaving. I read reunion news from seraphic Franciscans forty four years ago at edge of twenty. Alas, as hermit, I never attend. Am invisible. A history merely linear. No return.

Angels know circularity. I'm no angel. They are the message carried through and around history.

Angels are nothing but clear mystery communicating itself to sentient being.

Whenever a thought occurs,
Be aware of it,
As soon as you are aware of it,
It will vanish.
If you remain for a long period
Forgetful of objects,
You will naturally become unified.
This is the essential art of zazen.
- Dogen (1200-1253)

When message is delivered, messenger disappears. Tom the mailman does this everyday. Angels, I suspect, are very good at this, very good as this.

'He has given his angels charge over you to guard you in all your ways.' These words should fill you with respect, inspire devotion and instill confidence; respect for the presence of angels, devotion because of their loving service, and confidence because of their protection. And so the angels are here; they are at your side, they are with you, present on your behalf. They are here to protect you and to serve you. But even if it is God who has given them this charge, we must nonetheless be grateful to them for the great love with which they obey and come to help us in our great need.
(--from a Sermon by St. Bernard, Office of Readings, Feast of All Angels)

As transitus of Francis arrives, I am aware of his departure. He arrived, became the message my youthful imagination heard, then went (as everything does) its wandering way. He travelled this way and that. His community thought him crazy. Maybe he was. They had him relinquish reins. They locked him away. (Their poor and holy father was a nuisance. Saints are such an embarrassment.) I am not worthy of such insanity. I have to settle for common ridiculousness. The frequency of his sound reverberated and wobbled and settled into a current idiorythmic expression of the good poverello's inspiration. We are poor mimeticists

# Like a dream
Abandon evildoing;
Practice virtue well;
Subdue your mind:
This is the Buddha's teaching.

Like a star, an optical illusion, or a flame,
A magical illusion, a dewdrop, or a bubble,
Like a dream, a flash of lightning, or a cloud--
So should one consider all compounded things. While reciting [Shantideva's] words, we should reflect on impermanence and the lack of reality in phenomena. . .
- The Dalai Lama, A Flash of Lightning in the Dark of Night

If someone says my name on the street, I am reminded I am visible. It is a conceit to be anonymous, where no one knows my name. The surprise is hearing it. I respond,  greet, nonplussed -- a persistent state of perplexity, confusion, or bewilderment uncovered.

I am surprised to stand in midst of, say, university classroom -- a reluctant lecturer. Nothing univocal; everything equivocal. A facticity which is reciprocal -- dialogical.

Heidegger discusses facticity as the thrownness (Geworfenheit) of individual existence. By this, he is not only referring to a brute fact, or the factuality of a concrete historical situation, e.g., "born in the 50's." Facticity is something that already informs and has been taken up in existence, even if it is unnoticed or left unattended. As such, facticity is not something we come across and directly behold. In moods, for example, facticity has an enigmatic appearance, which involves both turning toward and away from it. For Heidegger, moods are conditions of thinking and willing to which they must in some way respond. The thrownness of human existence (or Dasein) is accordingly disclosed through moods.
(--from Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facticity)

We are thrown here. Some say it has been a choice, a series of causes and effects. An inevitability of consequences, traceable and tractable. Who knows?

Mozart, 1935

Poet, be seated at the piano.
Play the present, its hoo-hoo-hoo,
Its shoo-shoo-shoo, its ric-a-nic,
Its envious cachinnation.
If they throw stones upon the roof
While you practice arpeggios,
It is because they carry down the stairs
A body in rags.
Be seated at the piano.
That lucid souvenir of the past,
The divertimento;
That airy dream of the future,
The unclouded concerto . . .
The snow is falling.
Strike the piercing chord.
Be thou the voice,
Not you. Be thou, be thou
The voice of angry fear,
The voice of this besieging pain.
Be thou that wintry sound
As of the great wind howling,
By which sorrow is released,
Dismissed, absolved
In a starry placating.
We may return to Mozart.
He was young, and we, we are old.
The snow is falling
And the streets are full of cries.
Be seated, thou.
(--Poem by Wallace Stevens)

We play the present.

It is a grand failure.

A great joy.

To be here.

As nobody.

As (this).

One.

Is.

Once I had a dream. But it faded. Now I have no dream. Morning comes and night arrives. Light from lamp. Click. Darkness. Sleep.

If you think that you have
Cut off illusory mind,
Instead of simply clarifying
How illusory mind melts,
Illusory mind will come up again,
As though you had cut
The stem of a blade of grass
And left the root alive.
- Menzen Zuiho (1682 –1769)

Hibiscus tree comes into house through barn on handtruck. Season changes. Cool nights.

We pray for all beings.

When I had looked upon the mystical body of the Church, I recognised myself in none of the members which St. Paul described, and what is more, I desired to distinguish myself more favourably within the whole body. Love appeared to me to be the hinge for my vocation. Indeed I knew that the Church had a body composed of various members, but in this body the necessary and more noble member was not lacking; I knew that the Church had a heart and that such a heart appeared to be aflame with love. I knew that one love drove the members of the Church to action, that if this love were extinguished, the apostles would have proclaimed the Gospel no longer, the martyrs would have shed their blood no more. I saw and realised that love sets off the bounds of all vocations, that love is everything, that this same love embraces every time and every place. In one word, that love is everlasting.
(--from St Thérèse’s autobiography, Office of Readings, feast of Thérèse of Lisieux)

Dog to vet, just to check in. Cancer quietly spreads. But eyes are clear. Mountain walks. Not yet. But soon. He will become the mountain. I will become the mountain. Nothing else. Nowhere other. Mountain as dog and man unborn and gone beyond.

The Fall

There is no where in you a paradise that is no place and there
You do not enter except without a story.

To enter there is to become unnameable.

Whoever is nowhere is nobody, and therefore cannot exist except as unborn:
No disguise will avail him anything

Such a one is neither lost nor found.

But he who has an address is lost.

They fall, they fall into apartments and are securely established!

They find themselves in streets. They are licensed
To proceed from place to place
They now know their own names
They can name several friends and know
Their own telephones must some time ring.

If all telephones ring at once, if all names are shouted at once and all cars crash at one crossing:
If all cities explode and fly away in dust
Yet identities refuse to be lost. There is a name and a number for everyone.

There is a definite place for bodies, there are pigeon holes for ashes:
Such security can business buy!

Who would dare to go nameless in so secure a universe?
Yet, to tell the truth, only the nameless are at home in it.

They bear with them in the center of nowhere the unborn flower of nothing:
This is the paradise tree. It must remain unseen until words end and arguments are silent.
(--Poem, The Fall, by Thomas Merton, in Selected Poems)

Growing at home.

With no name.

No sound.

Without.

And.

Within.

Silence.

Genuine intimacy is Buber's "Thou." It is the slender waist of hourglass where everything passes through enroute one vastness to another. It is liturgy of eucharist wherein what was not one becomes one before expanding to amnesiac diversity.

Just don’t seek from others,
Or you’ll be far estranged from Self.
I now go on alone;
Everywhere I meet It:
It now is me; I now am It.
One must understand in this way
To merge with thusness.
- Dongshan Liangjie (807–869)

September has been a lovely month. October leans against barn door. It is the month of darkening light, holy women, Francis of Assisi, angels, baseball playoffs, remembrance of family gone beyond, and finally the thin place of worlds in proximity.

be
gin
by
be
ing

pa
tient

with
your
self

la
ter
you
can
be
pa
tient

with
oth
ers

(name
of
the
game

is
pa
tience.)
(--Poem be Robert Lax, from A Thing That Is)

If you look for me, find me there.

Where gaze requires no words.

Just feet to turn it around.

This circus cosmos.

Peanuts! Popcorn!

Consecration.

I don't know about angels. I don't know about anything. Today is the feast of Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael. They are archangels. I expect they know who they are. I don't.

But that's the thing about life and belief. There's no knowing. Even if your sure of something, there's no knowing.

One narrow path surrounded by a dense forest;
On all sides, mountains lie in darkness.
The autumn leaves have already fallen.
No rain, but still the rocks are dark with moss.
Returning to my hermitage along a way known to few,
Carrying a basket of fresh mushrooms
And a jar of pure water from the temple well.
- Ryokan (1758-1831)

So I sip water. Chew pizza. Watch a drama. Spell some words. Breathe and exhale. The wonderfully absurd practice of living is done day by day, hour by hour, minute by minute. The practice could end in a second.

15
I am Raphael, one of the seven angels who enter and serve before the Glory of the Lord."
16
Stricken with fear, the two men fell to the ground.
17
But Raphael said to them: "No need to fear; you are safe. Thank God now and forever.
18
As for me, when I came to you it was not out of any favor on my part, but because it was God's will. So continue to thank him every day; praise him with song.
19
Even though you watched me eat and drink, I did not really do so; what you were seeing was a vision.
20
So now get up from the ground and praise God. Behold, I am about to ascend to him who sent me; write down all these things that have happened to you."
(-- NAB - Tobit 12)

I like the idea we are safe.

I don't know I am safe. But I'm told.

It's good that some know who they are and they are safe.

It's also good that others practice breathing for the time being.

I'm glad there are archangels. I'm glad that everything else is too.

It doesn't matter what I think. Nor my opinion. What matters is the reality of what is.

When the question "What is reality?" is asked, remember it is a self-answering question. The answer is the question understood as its own response.

This is how I see the one we call God.

No more.

No less.

Exactly as it is.

If you hear the voice, you've got the call. Some of us don't hear, and don't get it. This news doesn't disappoint me. I'm not afraid of being an outsider.

What truth am I talking about? I am talking about truth of the ground of mind, which can enter into the ordinary and the sacred, into the pure and the polluted, into the absolute and the conventional, and yet is not the absolute, conventional, ordinary, and sacred, but is able to give names to all the absolute, conventional, ordinary, and sacred. Someone who has realized this cannot be labeled by the absolute or the conventional, by the ordinary or
sacred. If you can grasp it, then use it, without labeling it any more. This is called the mystic teaching.
- Lin Chi (d 867?)

Epictetus puts things this way:

XVIII
And to this I reply:
“Friends, wait for God. When He gives the
signal, and releases you from this service, then depart to Him. But for the present, endure to dwell in the place wherein He hath assigned you your post.
Short indeed is the time of your habitation therein, and easy to those that are thus minded. What tyrant, what robber, what tribunals have any terrors for those who thus esteem the body and all that belong to it as of no account? Stay; depart not rashly hence!”

Tom tried the metaphor of puppet. I objected. Rather, we are given, and life passes through us, cooperating in the invitation into one's own beauty and essence. In prison today John reflected John O'Donahue's words about humus beings, our being made of clay and given to listening.

So let them all be in the one shepherd and speak with the one shepherd’s voice, for the sheep to hear and follow their shepherd – not just any shepherd, but the one. Let all shepherds speak with one voice in him and not with separate voices: I beseech you, my brethren: say the same thing, all of you, and let there be no divisions among you. May that voice, cleansed of all division and purged of all error, be the voice that the sheep hear as they follow the shepherd who says 'The sheep that are mine hear my voice and follow me.'
(--from St Augustine's sermon On Pastors)

We must let one another alone.

The one we call God dwells alone.

With each.

And every.

One.

Of us.

Between true and false is emptiness. There, each is as it is. No leaning to more or to less. Each person's name is "at home."

When water is pure and sparkling clear
You see straight to the bottom
When your mind holds no concern
No circumstance can turn you
And once your mind doesn’t stray
A kalpa has no changes
From such awareness nothing hides.
- Cold Mountain

There is so much anguish about this or that. Our freedom is not this or that, but either and neither, it doesn't matter. So much worry about life and death. Between the two is this moment. More precisely is the awareness that between life and death is an unknowing instant -- now without name -- wherein we see the fact of things.

A writing of St Vincent de Paul
Serving the poor is to be preferred above all things
Even though the poor are often rough and unrefined, we must not judge them from external appearances nor from the mental gifts they seem to have received. On the contrary, if you consider the poor in the light of faith, then you will observe that they are taking the place of the Son of God who chose to be poor. (--from Office of Readings, Feast of Vincent)

On Monday nights in Bensonhurst my father would meet with other men to hear the needs and serve the people who needed help. It was their Saint Vincent's meeting. He didn't speak of what they did or who they helped. They just went out and came back.

Between the going out and the coming back is the revelation of being dead in life and alive in death -- nothing other.

The hole in our lives, the whole of our lives, is the emptiness of God.

Don't try to fill it.

Nor try to pour it out.

Find yourself there.

At home.

A sudden rain.

If your ears see,
And eyes hear,
Not a doubt you’ll cherish
How naturally the rain drips
From the eaves!
- Daito Kokush

Passing.

Through.

Moon hangs lightly above Curtis Island. Puffs of white cloud accentuate. Waters of Penobscot Bay calm and smooth. Voices from deck and restaurant carry on. This lovely September night.

Nothing and Everything
The great Indian teacher Nisargadatta Maharaj once said, "Wisdom tells me I am nothing. Love tells me I am everything. Between the two my life flows." "I am nothing" does not mean that there is a bleak wasteland within. It does mean that with awareness we open to a clear, unimpeded space, without center or periphery--nothing separate. If we are nothing, there is nothing at all to serve as a barrier to our boundless expression of love. Being nothing in this way, we are also, inevitably, everything. "Everything" does not mean self-aggrandizement, but a decisive recognition of interconnection; we are not separate. Both the clear, open space of "nothing" and the interconnectedness of "everything" awaken us to our true nature. This is the truth we contact when we meditate, a sense of unity beyond suffering. It is always present; we merely need to be able to access it.
(-- Sharon Salzberg, Lovingkindness from Everyday Mind, a Tricycle book edited by Jean Smith)

Late yesterday afternoon rowing skiff out northeast channel around bell buoy, then across to number 2 bell buoy, beyond Coast Guard tender, back around Curtis, in to tie up at dock by shop. Lovely liturgy of oar and wave.

I like the notion that all teachers have gone away leaving just us. Gods have disappeared beyond clouds. All saviors, masters, saints, and bodhisattvas have gone silent. It's just us. And community is teacher. One another is hope.

Che fece ... il gran rifiuto

Translated by
Edmund Keeley & Philip Sherrard

For some people the day comes
when they have to declare the great Yes
or the great No. It's clear at once who has the Yes
ready within him; and saying it,
he goes from honor to honor, strong in his conviction.
He who refuses does not repent. Asked again,
he'd still say no. Yet that no-the right no-
drags him down all his life.
(--Poem by C.P. Cavafy)

Between yes and no is not maybe.

Between the two is emptiness.

I dwell there.

Tonight.

I mourn the death of a woman I knew. She died of lung cancer. Five years ago. I've just read her obituary.

Everyone dies. Fathers, mothers, relatives, friends, and strangers. Every day. That's not a surprising statement. The fact of it must be affirmed. And yet it's always a surprise when someone we know dies. Why is that?

What is the truth? The truth is the reality of mind. The reality of mind is formless and pervades the ten directions. It is being used presently, right before your eyes, yet people do not trust it sufficiently, so they accept terms and expressions, seeking to assess Buddhism conceptually in the written word. They are as far away as the sky is from earth.
- Lin Chi (d 867?)

For a moment let's do away with both original sin and karma.

From: St Augustine's sermon On Pastors
The straying sheep you have not recalled; the lost sheep you have not sought. In one way or another, we go on living between the hands of robbers and the teeth of raging wolves, and in light of these present dangers we ask your prayers. The sheep moreover are insolent. The shepherd seeks out the straying sheep, but because they have wandered away and are lost they say that they are not ours. “ Why do you want us? Why do you seek us?” they ask, as if their straying and being lost were not the very reason for our wanting them and seeking them out. “If I am straying”, he says, “if I am lost, why do you want me?” You are straying, that is why I wish to recall you. You have been lost, I wish to find you. “But I wish to stray”, he says: “I wish to be lost”.
So you wish to stray and be lost? How much better that I do not also wish this. Certainly, I dare say, I am unwelcome. But I listen to the Apostle who says: Preach the word; insist upon it, welcome and unwelcome. Welcome to whom? Unwelcome to whom? By all means welcome to those who desire it; unwelcome to those who do not. However unwelcome, I dare to say: “You wish to stray, you wish to be lost; but I do not want this”. For the one whom I fear does not wish this. And should I wish it, consider his words of reproach: The straying sheep you have not recalled; the lost sheep you have not sought. Shall I fear you rather than him? Remember, we must all present ourselves before the judgement seat of Christ.
I shall recall the straying; I shall seek the lost. Whether they wish it or not, I shall do it. And should the brambles of the forests tear at me when I seek them, I shall force myself through all straits; I shall put down all hedges. So far as the God whom I fear grants me the strength, I shall search everywhere. I shall recall the straying; I shall seek after those on the verge of being lost. If you do not want me to suffer, do not stray, do not become lost. It is enough that I lament your straying and loss. No, I fear that in neglecting you, I shall also kill what is strong. Consider the passage that follows: And what was strong you have destroyed. Should I neglect the straying and lost, the strong one will also take delight in straying and in being lost.
(from Office of Readings, 24Sept2007)

I prefer: No one is lost. And Christ's "judgment seat" is more likely a "welcome, sit, rest, we'll talk" kind of thing. It is a curious belief that holds everyone liable for some past mistake or infraction. I'd rather the teaching be abandoned. Matthew Fox counters with "Original Blessing." My preference is the point of view that we dwell, always, at origin. Right now -- are we present cultivating kindness, healing, and trust? Or do we cultivate separation, harm, and mistrust. (Today is not a good example for me. I'd rather have nothing to do with anyone. The saving grace, though, is that I wish none harm.)

The theory of karmic rebirth is that one’s past life determines the circumstances into which one is reborn in this present life. If you were lustful in a past life, you might be reborn as an animal for example. Or if you led an exemplary past life, you might well be reborn as a god or demi-god. The point is that you get what’s coming to you, and if you want a favorable rebirth in your next life, you better watch how you behave in this one. At its best, it’s an odd and unnecessary elaboration of simple consequence. At its worst, it’s a means of citizen control and institutional support, extracting alms from the citizenry in return for merit favorable to a fortunate rebirth. I find little distinction between this disingenuous practice and the marketing of pardons and indulgences in medieval Christian traditions. In Buddhist practice it has served primarily as a way to sustain priestly authority and exact a living out of people’s fears and hopes regarding rebirth.

What’s particularly distracting about this teaching is that one can devote one’s entire life to acquiring merit for a future life. And what’s positively ugly about this teaching is its application to the misfortunes of people born into lives of present suffering. A child who’s born crippled or blind is by this theory assumed to be suffering a consequence attributed to past life behavior. While Buddhism encourages compassion for such a child, it’s nonetheless understood that the unfortunate child is a victim of his own doing. I don’t know about others, but to assume that a child born deaf or blind or suffering from aids or a child badly burned in a fire or struck down in a crosswalk or starving to death in some poverty ridden slum somewhere is simply getting what’s coming to him is a judgment I simply can’t stomach. Those Buddhist teachers who can — and this includes not entirely teachers from devotional Buddhist traditions but many Zen teachers as well — place great emphasis on purifying past karma, a notion so reminiscent of the biblical tradition of original sin as to be almost indistinguishable. Not only that but the anxious quest for a favorable rebirth is little different from a theist’s hope for a reward in heaven. Devoting one’s efforts to cleansing karma is a notion that renders present life to the status of a mere means to an end, and not something in its own right. The hope for reward distorts and undermines the simple modesty of living one’s life as compassionately and harmlessly as possible.
(from Choice, By Lin Jensen, in Tricycle, The Buddhist Review, 8/8/07)

Karma is perhaps best seen as consequences of present actions in present life.

The difficulty with original sin and karma is unknown past determinant of current reality. In the Christian metaphor a divine being is posited as savior of all. I'm fond neither of being condemned nor saved. And with the Buddhist metaphor there's a temptation to think you have to go about doing good for some rewarding next birth -- rather than good being its own delight.

The twin motif of crime and punishment is rife in our psyche.

Mary, my friend whose obituary of five years ago I've just read, is in herself an example of someone who came to be seen in this existence, smiled and cried, then disappeared. We looked at life together twenty eight years ago, ate pasta, and ran Fairmont Park because we could.

We feel sad at some news, and something deeper than that at confirmation of news.

In the war, the never-ending reminder of what original sin and karma used to try to account for -- we bait and condemn each other.

Under a program developed by a Defense Department warfare unit, Army snipers have begun using a new method to kill Iraqis suspected of being insurgents, planting fake weapons and bomb-making material as bait and then killing anyone who picks up them up, according to testimony presented in a military court.

The existence of the classified “baiting program,” as it has come to be known, was disclosed as part of defense lawyers’ efforts to respond to murder charges the Army pressed this summer against three members of a Ranger sniper team. Each soldier is accused of killing an unarmed Iraqi in three separate incidents between April and June near Iskandariya.
(--September 24, 2007, Soldiers Describe Baiting of Insurgents in Iraq, By Paul Von Zielbauer, New York Times)

Soon anyone who even thinks wrongly in anyone else's opinion will be killed. It is, it seems, the way we are. We kill. We see death as a solution.

Today I sequester myself at the harbour room. Earlier this morning I hiked Ragged Mtn with Cesco -- a good, long hike. Then here. I watched the big schooners -- the Angelique go out, the Lewis B. French come back, the Grace Bailey go out; and the small schooners -- Lazy Jack, Surprise, and Appledore, take passengers for two hour sails. The wind is stiff. Sun and sky clear and bright. Flags flutter with resolve.

I read Don DeLillo's novel Falling Man. I'll work on students' papers and read for Wednesday's class. It's autumn. Leaves have been seen underfoot.

Luckily, the oars and life jacket are in the skiff.

Sound in rural Maine is specific.

Wind along mountain through cedar, car beginning ascent between Ragged and Bald, longing loon call from pond, red squirrel nervous bravado as cat passes below, critter turning in wall, soundless moon through leaves, three sets of chimes in sudden gust, a cricket's solitary call.

Sages do not want anything
And do not avoid anything.
When you want something,
That may make you lose it;
And if you try to avoid something,
That may just bring it about.
When you desire something in your heart,
Then you forget what you are doing.
Therefore sages carefully examine the
Changes of action and repose,
Adjusting the measures of
Receiving and giving suitably,
Governing feelings of
Like and dislike rationally,
And harmonizing degrees of joy and anger.
- Lao-tzu

I'm angry. It's not so specific.

It has its own sound.

Tonight it's silence.

The world is full of renunciations and apprenticeships, and this is thine; thou must pass for a fool, and a churl for a long season. And this is the reward; that the ideal shall be real to thee, and the impressions of the actual world shall fall like summer rain, copious, but not troublesome, to thy invulnerable essence."
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Long, untitled.

Silence.

Nobody likes the word sin. So we'll call broken trust and selfish harm something else. Let's call it increased separative nefarious trauma, ("isn't").

Don’t say that only
clear water mirrors the moon.
Muddy water also reflects the sky.
Watch, after wind has settled
and the waves are calm,
for a wonderful moon, as lovely as before
- Lin Chi Chung ( 1119)

"Is it not" (the iterative expansion of "isn't") usually begins trying to prove the absence of what is. "Isn't it lovely?" "Isn't he the guy who did (such and such)?"
"Isn't she a someone we know?"

Sin isn'ts.

By trying to prove the absence or opposite of what is the goal is not to introduce doubt, as some might suggest. Rather the goal is to reach certainty. Sin tries to reach certainty.

Following Heisenberg's derivation of the uncertainty relations, one starts with an electron moving all by itself through empty space. To describe the electron, a physicist would refer to certain measured properties of the particle. Four of these measured properties are important for the uncertainty principle. They are the position of the electron, its momentum (which is the electron's mass times its velocity), its energy, and the time. These properties appear as "variables" in equations that describe the electron's motion.
The uncertainty relations have to do with the measurement of these four properties; in particular, they have to do with the precision with which these properties can be measured.

The uncertainty relations may be expressed in words as follows.

The simultaneous measurement of two conjugate variables (such as the momentum and position or the energy and time for a moving particle) entails a limitation on the precision (standard deviation) of each measurement. Namely: the more precise the measurement of position, the more imprecise the measurement of momentum, and vice versa. In the most extreme case, absolute precision of one variable would entail absolute imprecision regarding the other.
(from, Ouantum Mechanics, 1925-1927, The Uncertainty Relations, http://www.aip.org/history/heisenberg/p08a.htm)

A bit like theology. Or poetry. Or the relationality we have with any person. Who can know precisely, or for certain, another. It is this awareness that keeps us honest. The absence of this awareness leads to possession and abuse.

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

How dreary to be somebody!
How public, like a frog
To tell your name the livelong day
To an admiring bog!
( Poem, "I'm nobody! Who are you?" by Emily Dickinson)

About sin I'm not sure I have anything else to say.

Isn't that something?

No.

It's nothing.

In prison yesterday one man said, "The present is gift."

No absence; no opposite.

An only begotten presence draws us all through and beyond.

All vows, Kol Nidre -- for unfulfilled obligations of the past year and the next, forgiveness.

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

In small church in Lincolnville there's a 12 hour vigil for peace through the night.

I've been thinking about at the speed of light (186,000 miles per second) it would take 15 billion years to reach the edge of the known universe.

Even there, finally arrived at, there'll be need for forgiveness and peace.

Pack up.

Let's go!

So many want to blame the church for their lives.

Do we blame shallow intelligence? Must an intellectual apologize for the ability to question?

Whenever a thought occurs,
Be aware of it,
As soon as you are aware of it,
It will vanish.
If you remain for a long period
Forgetful of objects,
You will naturally become unified.
This is the essential art of zazen.
- Dogen (1200-1253)

Being mindful of this or that is equally unifying. Heaven vanishes into the now. Why look anywhere else?

Identity is the concept that refers to this aspect of existence; the aspect of existing as something in particular, with specific characteristics. An entity without an identity cannot exist because it would be nothing. To exist is to exist as something, and that means to exist with a particular identity.
*--from A is A: Aristotle's Law of Identity,
http://importanceofphilosophy.com/Metaphysics_Identity.html)

We're here in this existence. We're in-formed. No need to pretend we're just passing through.

There's nowhere to go.

It's all here.

Even there.

Is.

Here.

I don't know what truth is.

The buddhas and Zen masters of all times and places have emerged only on account of search for truth. Present day seekers are also in search of truth. Only when you attain truth will you be done; until you have attained it, you will repeat your former ways.
- Lin Chi (d 867?)

I still don't know what truth is.

“The truth is that casting aside the time-honored protection of habeas corpus makes us more vulnerable as a nation because it leads us away from our core American values,” said Senator Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont, a co-sponsor of the measure with Senators Arlen Specter, Republican of Pennsylvania, and Christopher J. Dodd, Democrat of Connecticut. Mr. Leahy is the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee and Mr. Specter the committee’s senior Republican; both are former prosecutors.

The legal concept of habeas corpus (“You have the body” in Latin) dates back to medieval England, and is meant to protect people from being locked up indefinitely without a court review. Last year, Congress passed and President Bush signed an act eliminating the right of habeas corpus for non-Americans who are labeled “enemy combatants” in the continuing campaign against terrorism.
(--from, Senate Blocks Detainees’ Rights Bill, By DAVID STOUT, Published: September 19, 2007, WASHINGTON, The New York Times)

How about now?

Nope, I don't.

D'you?

In Merton's 'Dawn' prayer for Tuesday in Book of Hours the sentence: "We are what we love."

It struck me that some of us are not. Not loving, we cannot be. It also struck me how it is that we use another as object, reject others, disdain or deceive others. In these behaviors we show that we are not.

Light rain, the mountain forest
Is wrapped in mist,
Slowly the fog changes
To clouds and haze.
Along the boundless river bank,
Many crows.
I walk to a hill overlooking the valley
To sit in zazen.
- Ryokan (1758-1831)

Me, minus love, is not at all. Me, with love, is you.

one's not half two. It's two are halves of one:

one's not half two. It's two are halves of one:
which halves reintegrating,shall occur
no death and any quantity;but than
all numerable mosts the actual more

minds ignorant of stern miraculous
this every truth-beware of heartless them
(given the scalpel,they dissect a kiss;
or,sold the reason,they undream a dream)

one is the song which fiends and angels sing:
all murdering lies by mortals told make two.
Let liars wilt,repaying life they're loaned;
we(by a gift called dying born)must grow

deep in dark least ourselves remembering
love only rides his year.
All lose,whole find
(-- Poem by e.e.cummings)

Is that it?

All lose?

Whole find?

John Fowles opened his novel Daniel Martin with these words: Whole sight; or all the rest is desolation.

We love what we are -- why not be this?

Growing deep in dark.

Emerging as I am, we are, as love...

Is.

On an island in middle of Megunticook Lake, cedar strip canoe pulled half onto shore, September clear morning.

All along the trail of moss,
I followed your wooden shoe prints.
White clouds hung around your little island
Where spring grass hid your unlocked door.
I enjoyed the colors of pines after rain
And reached the river’s source
Along the mountain trail.
Facing the stream and the flowers
I came inside a sense of Zen,
Yet cannot find the words.
- Liu Chang Ching (709–780)

What do we not have? What is in absence when we find the presence of something else?

All action aims at getting something that we feel the want of, or at creating something that does not yet exist. In this very special sense, it fills a void, and goes from the empty to the full, from an absence to a presence, from the unreal to the real.
(--p.273, in Creative Evolution, by Henri Bergson, trans. by Arthur Mitchell, 1913)

Is nothing missing?

Is the absence of nothing the presence of which you are?

Sunday Evening Practice is quiet and chilly. Sunday morning was a joyful canoe paddle on Megunticook Lake. Sunday afternoon at shop was food and conversation in clear weather.

The promise we take at Meetingbrook Hermitage of 'correspondence' has to do with faithful engagement, of service, of responding with another in their joy or sorrow.

In spring, hundreds of flowers;
In autumn, a harvest moon;
In summer a refreshing breeze;
In winter, snow will accompany you.
If useless things do not hang in your mind,
Any season is a good season for you.
- Mu-mon 1228

A man in the shop today couldn't understand how anybody would want to attract suffering to their self. He does not yet understand the Tibetan notion of Tonglin.

Tonglin is very direct. The essence of the practice is to breathe in the suffering of another person and to breathe out loving-kindness, compassion, and healing. All of us have reference points for pain, and for joy and healing, in our lives; we can practice breathing in suffering and breathing out healing because we know that both exist. When I describe it this way, many of my students' first reaction is, "Won't someone else's suffering contaminate me? Shouldn't I be breathing my own suffering out? What if the suffering I breathe in overwhelms me? What if I don't have any healing energy to offer?" In fact, tonglin is balanced: We do not drown in suffering because tonglin constantly reminds us to breathe out healing; we do not hide in false joy because tonglin constantly reminds us to breathe in suffering. We receive and we give.
(--from Compassion & Tonglin Practice, by by Andrew Weiss, http://www.innerself.com/Meditation/weiss_andrew_60604.htm)

He, we, must first learn how to breathe. In. Out. With awareness and mercy.

The Red Wheelbarrow

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens.
(--Poem by William Carlos Williams)

I love that poem!

Maybe we have to consider further what it means to be one-body.

A man at conversation argued the crucifixion of Jesus never happened, that the story was a political and manipulative psychological mechanism of control over people by power brokers. O'Donohue had been writing about suffering, the cross and crucifixion as transfiguring moments in the life of Jesus, and thusly in the life of the world.

Another man spoke about the narrative of love and relationship moving through the scriptures, the invitation to turn to a life that encounters dark nights and dawning anticipation.

A woman weighed in that there is fact telling and truth telling, and that truth is not always represented by the clearest facts.

We love our conversations!

It is the one who is without obsession who is noble. Just do not act in a contrived manner; simply be normal. When you go searching elsewhere outside yourself, your whole approach is already mistaken. You just try to seek buddhahood, but buddhahood is just a name, an expression. Do you know the one who is doing the searching?
- Lin Chi (d 867?)

The journey of many if not all of us is one that takes us through this world with its combination of delusions and joys and tosses us up against the facts and facticity of human life. (Facticity (French: facticité, German: Faktizität) refers to the contingent yet intractable conditions of human existence. --from Wikipedia)

Yesterday, in the Catholic Christian calendar, was the feast of the Holy Cross. It was unintended that we read the part of O'Donohue's Eternal Echoes: Exploring Our Hunger to Belong dealing with the cross. It came out in conversation that suffering certainly seems to be universal, that the longing to pass through it is common, and that there is a difference between suffering which remains merely hurtfully punitive and suffering that is redemptive. The redemptive yields light, relief, understanding, and freedom when it has ceased. If so, and given the narrative story of this man named Jesus, why would there be a need to exempt him from suffering or even the telling of the story of his suffering, despite what anyone has chosen to make of it?

One's reality is one's reality. It is not dependent on the interpretation given it by either self or others. What is taking place, and what has taken place, is as it is. Whatever the mind makes of it is merely adjacent to the fact that it is as it is.

Because someone has ridiculed you, made of your suffering a boon to them for gain or control, there is no need to dismiss you as not having suffered what you did. Each person's suffering, however incurred, is to be allowed to be what it is. Our response -- whether an attempt to heal, or commiserate, or merely to hear of it -- invites us to practice an integrity of presence. Presence is presence. Speculation is speculation. Theories are theories. My choice in the face of suffering is presence.

A sermon of St Bernard
His mother stood by the cross
The martyrdom of the Virgin is set forth both in the prophecy of Simeon and in the actual story of our Lord’s passion. The holy old man said of the infant Jesus: He has been established as a sign which will be contradicted. He went on to say to Mary: And your own heart will be pierced by a sword.
Truly, O blessed Mother, a sword has pierced your heart. For only by passing through your heart could the sword enter the flesh of your Son. Indeed, after your Jesus – who belongs to everyone, but is especially yours – gave up his life, the cruel spear, which was not withheld from his lifeless body, tore open his side. Clearly it did not touch his soul and could not harm him, but it did pierce your heart. For surely his soul was no longer there, but yours could not be torn away. Thus the violence of sorrow has cut through your heart, and we rightly call you more than martyr, since the effect of compassion in you has gone beyond the endurance of physical suffering.
Or were those words, Woman, behold your Son, not more than a word to you, truly piercing your heart, cutting through to the division between soul and spirit? What an exchange! John is given to you in place of Jesus, the servant in place of the Lord, the disciple in place of the master; the son of Zebedee replaces the Son of God, a mere man replaces God himself. How could these words not pierce your most loving heart, when the mere remembrance of them breaks ours, hearts of iron and stone though they are!
Do not be surprised, brothers, that Mary is said to be a martyr in spirit. Let him be surprised who does not remember the words of Paul, that one of the greatest crimes of the Gentiles was that they were without love. That was far from the heart of Mary; let it be far from her servants.
Perhaps someone will say: “Had she not known before that he would not die?” Undoubtedly. “Did she not expect him to rise again at once?” Surely. “And still she grieved over her crucified Son?” Intensely. Who are you and what is the source of your wisdom that you are more surprised at the compassion of Mary than at the passion of Mary’s Son? For if he could die in body, could she not die with him in spirit? He died in body through a love greater than anyone had known. She died in spirit through a love unlike any other since his.
(--from Office of Readings, on feast of Our Lady of Sorrows.)

Here's my take: We're alive right now.

Let's. Be.

That. Be this.

Now. And for.

One.

Another.

The retired minister from northern Michigan camping in Maine sat in tonight's conversation. He is studying God's love letter to the world. Peanut butter cookie helps.

Meditating deeply
Reach the depth of the source.
Branching streams cannot
Compare to this source!
Sitting alone in a great silence
Even though the heavens
Turn and the earth is upset,
You will not even wink.
- Nyogen Senzaki (1876-1958)

In prison this morning John said about Mary Oliver's lines in The Summer Day that it seemed to him no one should waste one's life. It's a good phrase he expressed about not wasting one's life. "One's" life is the given. "One" is all there is. Each is a manifestation of that life. When we do not save that life as whole, we waste that life. One is one. By not being whole ourselves -- by siphoning off ourselves from the whole, by collapsing and fragmenting ourselves in non-essential detachment and intentional isolation -- we forget the very nature of our life and life itself.

Love at First Sight

You always hear about it—
a waitress serves a man two eggs
over easy and she says to the cashier,
That is the man I'm going to marry,
and she does. Or a man spies a woman
at a baseball game; she is blond
and wearing a blue headband,
and, being a man, he doesn't say this
or even think it, but his heart is a homing bird
winging to her perch, and next thing you know
they're building birdhouses in the garage.
How do they know, these auspicious lovers?
They are like passengers on a yellow
bus painted with the dreams
of innumerable lifetimes, a packet
of sepia postcards in their pocket.
And who's to say they haven't traveled
backward for centuries through borderless
lands, only to arrive at this roadside attraction
where Chance meets Necessity and says,
What time do you get off?
(--Poem: "Love at First Sight" by Jennifer Maier from Dark Alphabet. Southern Illinois University Press, 2006.)

We do an evening wash of Cesco on grass under cloudy sky. The indignities of advanced age! The difficulty of letting go, letting anything go, is the rusty practice of opening hand, releasing grip, and waving farewell. We humans are uncertain about this one certainty -- death. We prefer dying, not death. We like the saying that where there's life there's hope.

Albert Camus thinks it is possible to live an absurd life, and still be happy. I agree.

I tell the dog it's a two edged sword to be loved. He climbs the two steps to front door and resumes his place in front room.

Dear friend -- what time do you get off?

It's official. America will stay in Iraq. No reduction of troops. No strategy to end or disengage.

Instead, 2.5 billion dollars a week, with an acceptable number of US military casualties, and an acceptable number of angry Iraqi casualties. (This former category -- angry Iraqis-- for purposes of shilling the war, are typically called insurgents, terrorists, or, of late, al Qaeda in Iraq.)

Which way
Did you come from,
Following dream paths at night,
While snow is still deep
In this mountain recess?
- Ryokan (1758-1831)

The temperature chills. It's Maine. Time to fret that the wood is not ordered. Snow could come any time. (That's a bit over-reaching.) Still...something to think about other than futility and absurdity.

Mr. Bush gave a well-crafted speech tonight. Also delivered well. It would comfort me -- if I agreed with his premise, his reasoning, and the fact of the devastating problem he's led us into, and will not get us out of.

You do bad deeds and hope to get back good

Though bad deserves bad only in return.

God is merciful and kind, but even so,

If you plant barley, wheat won't grow.

(Poem by Jalal al-Din Rumi, #1798, from Rumi's Kolliyaat-e Shams-e Tabrizi)

There's no good place for this war to go.

We'll have to suffer its continuance.

Make do with barley. Look for wheat.

And look, and look, and look.

Let's keep the fast.

Rosh Hashanah -- Happy New Year!

Ramadan -- Good Fasting!

"Friends, I tell you this: there is no Buddha, no spiritual path to follow, no training and no realization. What are you so feverishly running after? Putting a head on top of your own head, you blind idiots? Your head is right where it should be. The trouble lies in your not believing in yourselves enough. Because you don't believe in yourselves you are knocked here and there by all the conditions in which you find yourselves. Being enslaved and turned around by objective situations, you have no freedom whatever, you are not masters of yourselves. Stop turning to the outside and don't be attached to my words either. Just cease clinging to the past and hankering after the future. This will be better than ten years' pilgrimage."
(--Lin Chi)

Nice name, Mary!

No clinging, no hankering!

My kind of guy, that Lin Chi!

Maybe there's a need to bench God for a while. Sit him down. Give her a towel. Hand him/her some water. Put on a warm-up jacket. Lean back. Loosen shoelaces. Become just one of the team. Do we think God would take issue? Would God be upset?

Maybe we'll recommend adjusting the use of the word "God" and continue encouraging the reality of God to work through all creation. We'll have to decide whether the word has been so used and abused that the call to park the name, the concept, or the being on the bench is a useful hiatus.

Space and the Buddha-nature
One of the most common analogies used to describe the Buddha-nature is space itself. This analogy has three aspects. First, just as space is omnipresent and yet is unpolluted by everything it pervades, similarly, Buddha-nature pervades every sentient being without being in any way tainted. Second, just as galaxies and universes arise and pass within space, so do the characteristics of our personalities arise and pass within Buddha-nature. Our sensations arise and pass away; Buddha-nature continues. Third, just as space is never consumed by fire, so this Buddha-nature is never consumed by the "fire" of aging, sickness, or death.
(--B. Alan Wallace, Tibetan Buddhism from the Ground Up From Everyday Mind, a Tricycle book edited by Jean Smith)

Humanly, we look at 9-11 with a mixture of anger, sorrow, and frustration. It is not apparent that wisdom has yet arrived. What individuals have done with the experience is mostly private. What the government has done in response is well known. Of that, there is anger, sorrow, and frustration on every side.

The Summer Day

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean—
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down—
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
(Poem: "The Summer Day" by Mary Oliver, from House of Light. Beacon Press, 1992.)

Maybe prayer is the willingness to "pay attention," "fall down," "kneel down," "be idle," "blessed," and "stroll through." Mary Oliver asks me what I plan to do with my life. The fact of 9-11 on a summer day six years ago also asks.

There's a need for a new understanding and experience of what we've called "God." The ways we've settled on to call God into the game when a strong arm in needed to enforce some payback, or to act as a fund raiser for private enterprises, as a foot soldier pulling the trigger, or greeter for suicide bombers entering what they call paradise -- all need revision.

"How do we go about this weeding of distorted influences that have shaped us since birth, and throughout formative years as a child, teenager, young adult? The key is the acceptance of the struggle to live an existence on the planet earth as free of as many illusions and delusions as possible. To truly know yourself is to struggle to overcome psychological weaknesses and develop inner strength
through knowledge and understanding, to learn to grapple with what you've been taught to believe about life, God, politics, love, art, and much more—and keep on struggling till you know what is true and what is based on inadequate knowledge and distortions of tradition and custom."
***
"We've got thousands of theologians mired in literalism and bias, spouting their limited interpretations of God and the Bible to crowds just as gullible as those Voltaire called the “credulous rabble” three hundred years ago. Not that the other four of the Big Five religions don’t have their mouthpieces to convince everyone their way is THE way. Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, Christianity, together create an immense hermeneutic absurdity of vast scope, a chaotic mind collage of abstract concepts, delusions, distortions and embellishment mixed with genuine vision and meaningful myth. The only saving grace, and I cannot stress this too often, is the stream of Sophianic wisdom, clear and pure, flowing through the flotsam and jetsam of it all, which, if we are careful, attentive, sincere, meticulously eclectic and persevering, we can partake of."
(- from Pushing Ultimates, by Lew Paz, c.2006, http://plumbell.com/Excerpts.html)

Meanwhile, I contemplate the Sophianic, namely, life as the life of self-giving wisdom.

Lord, I do not puff myself up or stare about,
or walk among the great or seek wonders beyond me.

Truly calm and quiet I have made my spirit:
quiet as a weaned child in its mother’s arms –
like an infant is my soul.
(--from Psalm 131,)

In-God, infant trust, how the soul/spirit longs to learn to pray!

Are we in-God?

Is "God" what is within everything?

The within Itself?

So it is we attend and attempt -- free, open, informal -- as is, prayer itself.

There's a dwelling space called the thin place.

Some live in between -- not this, not that. What luck! The unseen middle.

The great path has no gates,
Thousands of roads enter it.
When passing through this gateless gate
You walk freely between heaven and earth.
-- Mu-mon (1228)

Men discuss war in the halls of power. Citizens are at either end of saying leave or stay.

To Luck

In the cards and at the bend in the road
we never saw you
in the womb and in the crossfire
in the numbers
whatever you had your hand in
which was everything
we were told never to put
our faith in you
to bow to you humbly after all
because in the end there was nothing
else we could do
but not to believe in you
still we might coax you with pebbles
kept warm in the hand
or coins or the relics
of vanished animals
observances rituals
not binding upon you
who make no promises
we might do such things only
not to neglect you
and risk your disfavor
oh you who are never the same
who are secret as the day when it comes
you whom we explain
as often as we can
without understanding
(--Poem: "To Luck" by W. S. Merwin. The Writer's Almanac)

I wish Iraq luck. I wish America luck. If what I do is pray, then I pray for those at either extreme.

Looking from the between, one sees a place from which God looks. It is a lucky place.

Luck refers to that which is beyond control.

This is how I am -- says God -- invisible, completely with each one, and nowhere certain how it will end. Good Luck.

Many think, how odd.

Not me.

Just.

God.

Finally, rain.

The fragrance. The sound. The feel.

The dry ground and empty mountain receive moisture.

Time is to be valued! You just try to learn Zen or Tao on the surface as something outside yourself, learning to recognize terms and slogans, seeking “buddhahood,” seeking “mastery,” seeking “teachers,” considering them conceptually. Make no mistake about it; you have but one mother and father, so what more are you seeking? Turn your attention back upon yourself and observe.
- Lin Chi (d 867?)

I stay within.

Saskia went to hear Bob preach last evening at the local Catholic church. This morning she tells me his words. We are driving to South Thomaston to find out breakfast ended two hours earlier. We wind up in Rockland at table next to Farnsworth visitors. "Yes, the Wyeth, yes."

By last bite of toast with strawberry jam the cool downdraft coming in back door signaled there would be no canoeing.

I'd asked her what she would have done with the text. Then she asked me.

Great crowds accompanied Jesus on his way and he turned and spoke to them. If any man comes to me without hating his father, mother, wife, children, brothers, sisters, yes and his own life too, he cannot be my disciple. Anyone who does not carry his cross and come after me cannot be my disciple.
‘And indeed, which of you here, intending to build a tower, would not first sit down and work out the cost to see if he had enough to complete it? Otherwise, if he laid the foundation and then found himself unable to finish the work, the onlookers would all start making fun of him and saying, “‘ Here is a man who started to build and was unable to finish”. Or again, what king marching to war against another king would not first sit down and consider whether with ten thousand men he could stand up to the other who advanced against him with twenty thousand? If not, then while the other king was still a long way off, he would send envoys to sue for peace. So in the same way, none of you can be my disciple unless he gives up all his possessions.’
(--Luke 14:25 - 33)

I said there was an absurdity in the text recommending hatred of "father, mother, wife, children, brothers, sisters, yes and ... own life."

Whatever benign interpretation about loving 100% those near you with work and struggle, there is another view that must be mentioned, if not contemplated.

First, of course, the question whether these words are gloss. If not, what context inserted in delayed narrative. But if authentic utterance in an historically accurate retrieval -- what of them?

The homilist probably read from SERMONWRITER, Resources for Lectionary Preaching, the following:

"Whoever comes to me and does not hate (Greek: mesei –– hate, disregard, be indifferent to) father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple" (v. 26). This is a difficult verse to hear, because it sounds anti-family. In recent decades, we have seen the decline of the traditional family, a decline brought on in large measure because of our discomfort with commitment. We are beginning to recognize the consequences of that decline, and do not want Jesus to make it worse. Furthermore, Jesus' words sound disrespectful to parents, which also conflicts with our values.

This, however, is Semitic hyperbole or exaggeration for effect. Jesus is not calling us to hate father and mother, but is instead calling us to a commitment above all other commitments, including commitment to family. "Hate" in this context is not a call to develop an intense dislike for family members, but is rather a call to love them less than Christ. This is a common OT idea (see Prov. 13:24; 2 Sam. 19:6; Gen 29:30-33; Mal. 1:2-3; Deut. 21:15-17). "Compare also 16:13, where a love-hate...dichotomy describes preferring one master over another" (Stein, 397).

"Since Jesus said the hallmark of discipleship is loving everyone, including even enemies and persecutors, it can hardly be the case that Jesus would literally call disciples to hate those closest to them. If you're supposed to love the one who whipped you, why not the one who nursed you" (Hoezee, 405). (http://www.lectionary.org/EXEG-English/NT/ENT03-Luke/Luke%2014.25-33.htm)

Tonight I contemplate the strangeness of this world. Someone who is supposed to be the manifestation of love in this world suggests we hate those nearest us in the name of love.
Those who are ordained to remember the sacrificial murder of son for father's will themselves molest boys and have their crimes covered up by higher ups in the organization.
Those who hold highest government executive office in a country dedicated to the ideals of democracy and freedom instead cultivate lies and deception, secrecy, oligarchy, torture, and disregard for law.
Those as CEOs who manufacture tobacco products advertised to bring pleasure but instead bring addiction and cancer continue to earn millions of dollars in salaries while they hobnob with lawmakers influencing and funding them to ease up on restrictions and make lawsuits against them more difficult.
And, of course, those who are sent to war to fight an enemy find themselves shooting their own comrades, shooting innocent civilians, and hating themselves in middle of night for the terrible things they are inexplicably forced to do in the ugliness of war.

So much illusion. So much fiction.

Ideas and Images
Modern culture would have us worship before the altar of the thinking mind, with its endless capacity to produce ideas, fantasies, and formulas. We are taught that the thinking mind is the possessor of all wisdom, and we dedicate much of our lives to the pursuit of knowledge and information. Seeing the world and ourselves through the filter of all the information we have accumulated, we can be imprisoned by the very ideas and images we have so ardently pursued. Often we think that we know ourselves, when what we know is only what we think about ourselves. When we think we know the world around us, our static images bar us from seeing the mystery held within each changing moment. What is an image if not just a description of the world that is bound to the past? - (--Christina Feldman and Jack Kornfield, Stories of the Spirit, Stories of the Heart)

Where to look?

Just now, last Ginger Snap cookie.

Just now, swig of water.

Just now, with what is.

Ground.

Feel.

And.

Observe.

Note:
We're taking a few days quiet away. The Bookshop Bakery will re-open Wednesday afternoon 12Sept07

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

Religion is a tricky category. You can claim to be religious and not be. You can claim not to be religious, and be such. Charlatans make facile claims. Holiness remains silent.

There's one, and only one, way to know one from the other.

The United States, we love to say — and Europeans repeat in a kind of incredulous wonder — is the most “religious” country in the world. Meaning, of course, the most church-going country in the world. Whether or not going to church correlates well with religious values is clearly a debatable subject. To wit, the corporal works of mercy — as in, feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, clothe the naked, house the homeless, visit the imprisoned, visit the sick, and bury the dead. It is on these criteria in Matthew 25: 31-46, however, that Jesus rests his definition of salvation. No small thing for those who considers themselves “religious.”
(Published on Friday, September 7, 2007 by National Catholic Reporter, re-posted on Common Dreams, We Need Candidates Who Are Really Religious, by Joan Chittister)

Only by fruits are the religious known. It's what we are and what we do -- not what we say. Talk, as they say, is cheap. Acts are a more reliable currency.

Mostly, what we need is transformation.

Looking Deeply
Garbage can smell terrible, especially rotting organic matter. But it can also become rich compost for fertilizing the garden. The fragrant rose and the stinking garbage are two sides of the same existence. Without one, the other cannot be. Everything is in transformation. The rose that wilts after six days will become a part of the garbage. After six months the garbage is transformed into a rose. When we speak of impermanence, we understand that everything is in transformation. This becomes that, and that becomes this. Looking deeply, we can contemplate one thing and see everything else in it. We are not disturbed by change when we see the interconnectedness and continuity of all things. It is not that the life of any individual is permanent, but that life itself continues.
(--Thich Nhat Hanh, in Present Moment, Wonderful Moment)

Then there are words that encourage others to act. Even the current Pope, Benedict XVI, has good words, like the following:

Benedict urged the young to "go against the grain" and not be seduced by pressure, including from the mass media, to succeed at all costs in arrogant, egotistical ways.

"Be vigilant! Be critical! Don't get swept up in the wave of this powerful persuasion," he said. "Don't be afraid, dear friends, to take the 'alternate' path indicated by true love: a sober and solid lifestyle, with loving, sincere and pure relations, an honest commitment to studies and work, and the profound interest in the common good."
(--Pope urges young to care for planet, By NICOLE WINFIELD, Associated Press Writer Sun Sep 2, 4:14 PM ET)

He was talking about paying attention to the earth's resources. I suppose his words could equally apply to matters of faith, authority, abuses, and healthy direction with regard to church, state, and corporate life. In fact, life itself.

The Dreams of the Old

So they are around our table—my mother,
my father, an uncle—and we begin to talk
about our dreams—with some urgency—
as if our dreams could pinpoint our psychic
dangers—our unrealized goals—our
ordinary fear of death and the future.
My mother talks about her dreams of flying
over the little town where she grew up—
over the old Opera House—down Main Street—
with all the people she knew below her—
then towards the gently flowing river—
that seemed to flow into the sunset—
toward which she soared—she lingered
with us on that image—as if she had said
enough—then—my uncle talked about
his recurring dream—he's going to be
in a play—but no one's bothered
to rehearse the scenes—he's standing
in the wings waiting to go on—he doesn't
know what he will say—all through this
my father is silent—he is closest to death—
we all know this—we forgive him his silence—
his silence—has his presence—as in a dream.
(--Poem: "The Dreams of the Old" by Timothy J. Nolan, on The Writer's Almanac)

In today's culture, everyone is a commentator. Similarly, no act, no person passing by is immune from worded assessment, opinion pinned to their departing presence, or judgment levied with the unconscious mimicry of an omniscient God, indignant Imam, infallible Pope, or other examples where arrogance might subtly appear in association with power, knowledge, or assumed superiority.

The silent among us dwell differently.

Only acts speak.

Nothing.

Else.

Matters.

Tomorrow is Mary's birthday.

Unmon said: "I do not ask you about fifteen days ago. But what about fifteen days hence? Come, say a word about this!" Since none of the monks answered, he answered for them: "Every day is a good day."
--Zen Koan

In prison this morning one of the men said "Compassion brings the one practicing it into intimate connection with the one receiving compassion. Pity puts the pitier at a distance from the one pitied."`

The Lord God called to the man. ‘Where are you?’ he asked. ‘I heard the sound of you in the garden;’ he replied ‘I was afraid because I was naked, so I hid.’ ‘Who told you that you were naked?’ he asked ‘Have you been eating of the tree I forbade you to eat?’ The man replied, ‘It was the woman you put with me; she gave me the fruit, and I ate it’. Then the Lord God asked the woman, ‘What is this you have done?’ The woman replied, ‘The serpent tempted me and I ate’.
--Genesis 3:9 - 20

It's only an apple.

Now we need a little compassion.

Happy birthday!

No voice but Luciano Pavarotti today singing Nessun Dorma.

You have obstacles only because you have not realized the emptiness of the eons. Genuine Wayfarers are never like this; they just dissolve their history according to conditions, dressing according to circumstances, acting when they need to act, and sitting when they need to sit, without any idea of seeking the fruits of buddhahood.
- Lin Chi (d 867?)

At Thursday Evening Conversation the talk was of war.

War is not the answer.

So many think it is.

It's not.

Metaphor carries us beyond.

God is a metaphor for that which transcends all levels of intellectual thought. It's as simple as that.
(-- Joseph Campbell, quoted from Famous Dead Non-theists)

And that, of course, is that.

Dark early. At sundown I rowed Camden Harbor, out around Curtis Island, wide sweep toward red buoy, and back through channel. One harbor seal kept an eye on me on my return.

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

In cabin, a solitary candle burns through darkness for friend one year dead today, She knew the cabin well on Sunday evenings -- sitting, walking, and chanting. I miss her.

Musee des Beaux Arts

About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters; how well, they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.
In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.
( --Poem by W. H. Auden, 1938)

At my first class on Ethics tomorrow night I'll lecture on "Suffering." I agree with Albert Camus. He said: ""There is but one truly serious philosophical problem and that is suicide." We each ask the question. The conclusion we reach is consequential.

Depression is not about pain. Depression is about the absence of pain, the absence of feeling.
Depression covers anxiety and fear like a fog. Once depressed, I was no longer anxious about my children. If I drank a cup of coffee, my mood was not enhanced; if I went to a party, I didn't feel better.
If I read poetry, my soul no longer blossomed as it had in the past. No feeling is what depression is about, and the condition created a barrier between me and my children, my husband, my friends.
Depression is not about pain: it's about everything gone away. ...
Women in each generation of my family endured lives of poverty; they passively suffered the births of many children, yet they knew there were other lives they could have lived. They were afraid to look. ....

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

What does it mean to transcend one's own reality?

Who is suffering? And, whose suffering is not also ours?

It is good to live a good life. Would it be better to realize the wholeness of life?

You are my metaphor.

Your very reality.

As you...like it.

Candle flame.

Old dog and olding companion to old dog walk Ragged Mountain early. Young dogs with pleasant companions catch up easily, greet, and pass ahead on the trails and runways. It is Labor Day. A holiday.

Mountain waves branches welcoming all visitors.

The perfect way’s like boundless space
Nothing lacking, nothing extra
It is because of choice
That its absolute truth is lost.
Don’t pursue externals;
Don’t dally in the interior void.
When the spirit remains serene
In the unity of things
Dualism vanishes by itself;
When that unity is not clear
There is loss in both directions.
- Sent-ts’an (d. 606)

Cars will head south today. The beautiful weather will cause to linger those wishing one last canoe ride, one last walk on country path, one last long cup of coffee talking about the summer vacation and dreamingly itemizing next year's.

All is flux
The Buddha stressed the dynamic nature of existence. This resonates with the ideas of some early Greek philosophers, such as Heraclitus, who maintained that, "All is flux" and "You can't step into the same river twice." Now, all this sounds like common sense. Yest there is something in our minds and emotions that kicks back at the idea of change. We are forever trying to break the dynamic world-dance, which is a unity, into separate "things," which we then freeze in the ice of thought. But the world-dance doggedly refuses to remain fragmented and frozen. It swirls on, changing from moment to moment laughing at all our pitiful attempts to organize and control it. In order to live skillfully, in harmony with the dynamic Universe, it is essential to accept the reality of change and impermanence. The wise person therefore travels lightly, with a minimum of clutter, maintaining the proverbial "open mind" in all situations, for he or she knows hat tomorrow's reality will not be the same as today's. He or she will also have learned the divine art of letting go -- which means not being attached to people and possessions and situations, but rather, when the time for parting comes, allowing that to happen graciously.
(- John Snelling, Elements of Buddhism From Everyday Mind, a Tricycle book edited by Jean Smith)

Sometimes what we call prayer is all that remains. With prayer we lift mind/heart to what is in itself loving and true, to what is in itself -- love and truth.

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

Then, when people look through their hearts -- then, will what is called God be seen through.

Minute by minute the day is.

And becomes.

Itself.

Three of us faced Belfast Harbor talking about boats, buildings, and beautiful mornings.

Alden is 60 today. He invited us into his backyard.

The pure light of your mind in a single moment of thought is the reality-body Buddha in your own house.
The nondiscriminatory light of your mind in a single moment of thought is the reward-body Buddha in your own house.
The nondifferentiated light of your mind in a single moment of thought is the projection-body Buddha in your own house.
These three kinds of embodiment are none other than the person who is listening to the teaching right here and now, but it is only by not seeking outwardly that one has these effective functions.
- Lin Chi (d 867?)

A gracious host in Belfast, a reminder of the quiet joy of hospitality, and we are welcomed beings.

The walk back across the foot bridge is sweet September sunshine and lovely breeze. Men and boys bait their hooks, tossing lines down into Passagassawakeag river.

Back from where we come from, a man in white Rankins' hat keeps watch over the day.

Tide makes its way up-river.