There's not enough room here for two of us.

My hut isn’t quite six feet across
Surrounded by pine, bamboos, and mountains,
An old monk hardly has room for himself
Much less for a visiting cloud.
- Shih-wu (1272-1352)

The impulse is to get rid of what we do not like. So we decide between two. Then cut away what we consider to be not us. It's an ancient problem, solved by elimination. It's a solution without promise.

Buddhism stands unique in the history of human thought in denying the existence of. . . a Soul, Self, or Atman. According to the teaching of the Buddha, the idea of self is an imaginary, false belief which has no corresponding reality, and it produces harmful thoughts of "me" and "mine," selfish desire, craving, attachment, hatred, ill-will, conceit, pride, egoism, and other defilements, impurities and problems. It is the source of all the troubles in the world from personal conflicts to wars between nations. In short, to this false view can be traced all the evil in the world.
--Walpola Rahula, What the Buddha Taught from Everyday Mind, edited by Jean Smith, a Tricycle book

Such a strange prospect -- no-self.

What could possibly come of it?

What if there were only room for one?

Pardon me, I'd like to step aside, make room for another, and disappear.

Are we willing to be one of these unremarkable transparencies?

See through.

One.

Another.

No-other.

It's quite cloudy over the mountains tonight.

Water is water wherever it is.

Today the dead are alive in our heart and mind. All Souls Day. A monstrance of remembrance.

Holding my sweater and
Facing the fragrant peony,
I sense how different our viewpoints are.
Someday our hair will turn gray,
Yet the flowers will be this red each year;
Following the morning dew,
Each blooms gorgeously
Then their sweet scent is
Chased by the evening winds.
Why wait till they have withered and fallen
To understand such emptiness?
- Fa Yen (885–958)

On way to prison this morning we stop at cemetery and pray a psalm:

Psalm 40

I waited, I waited for the Lord;
and he heard me.
He heard my voice when I cried,
he led me from the pit of misery,
he led me from the mire of filth.
He set my feet on firm rock,
he steadied my footsteps.
He filled my being with a new song,
a song to the Lord.

Many shall see what has happened, and trust,
and honour the Lord.
Happy the man who puts his trust in the Lord,
who pays no heed to the proud,
who pays no heed to liars.
Many are your wonders, O Lord my God,
and great is your care for us:
there is no-one like you.
If I wanted to tell the things you have done for us –
they are too many to count.

You have refused sacrifice and oblation,
but you have opened your ears to me.
You have refused burnt-offerings, even for sin –
so I said “I am coming.
The books of scripture have written of me.
It is your will, my God, that I wish to perform:
your law is next to my heart”.

There is no-one like you.

You are the one.

No.

One.

Else.

Here!

A saint knows no separation and acts accordingly.

Jose Ortega y Gasset had a phrase that fits: 'Yo soy yo y mi circunstancia y si no la salvo a ella no me salvo yo', (Roughly re-rendered: I am myself and my circumstances, and if my circumstances are not saved, nor am I.

Or, put another way: We are the world, the earth, and each being dwelling therein and thereon; as is the mind and heart, so too the outer forms we call the circumstances of this existence.

If you meet a fencing master on the road,
give him your sword,
If you meet a poet,
offer her your poem.
When you meet others,
say only a part of what you intend.
Never give the whole thing at once.
- Mu-mon (1228)

A non-poet will not hear your poem. So, speak carefully and carry no shtick.

Emily Dickinson wrote: "Tell all the Truth but tell it slant-".

We need saints.

Circumstances require them.

Let's stand around together.

Until saints show.

There's no difference.

With the moon emerged,
My mind is motionless.
Sitting on this frosty seat,
No further dream of fame.
The forest, the mountain
Follow their ancient ways,
And through the long spring day,
Not even a shadow of a bird.
- Reizan (1411)

Nor is anything the same.

Each is.

Itself.

When leaders hide and dissemble, many suffer.

What is the right thing to do?

Kuei-shan asked Yun-yen,
“What is the seat of enlightenment?”
Yun-yen said,
“Freedom from artificiality.”
- Kuei-shan (771-854)

Do authentically what is the authentic thing to do.

That's right.

au·then·tic (ô-thntk) adj.
1. Conforming to fact and therefore worthy of trust, reliance, or belief: an authentic account by an eyewitness.
2. Having a claimed and verifiable origin or authorship; not counterfeit or copied: an authentic medieval sword.
3. Law Executed with due process: an authentic deed.

Be true to origin.

Be source to circumstance.

No trickery.

Try treating truth well.

Boston wins baseball crown. Tommy's not going to be happy. Better than that other team playing between Yonkers and Staten Island. We did, nevertheless, like Joe.

Recognize as the basis the mind
That does not pursue things.
In the midst of your daily activities,
As you attend to things and
Respond to things,
Always rely on this mind that
Does not pursue things.
As soon as your mind starts to pursue
Things, immediately gather it back in.
Stay with this for a long time, and you
Will gradually become ripe.
- Luo Hongxian (1504-1564)

Cut branches, limbs, tree. Clean gutters, transfer freezers, walk mountain. A day outdoors working in the chill sun.

Living the life of the mind isn't academic. Being smart is no promise of wisdom or even sanity. I know so many who think they know this or that, get fine grades and fail ordinariness, know exactly what's wrong everywhere else but in their own mind. It's our story. We live here. On earth.

The skies tell the story of the glory of God,
the firmament proclaims the work of his hands;
day pours out the news to day,
night passes to night the knowledge.

Not a speech, not a word,
not a voice goes unheard.
Their sound is spread throughout the earth,
their message to all the corners of the world.

At the ends of the earth he has set up
a dwelling place for the sun.
Like a bridegroom leaving his chamber,
it rejoices like an athlete at the race to be run.
It appears at the edge of the sky,
runs its course to the sky’s furthest edge.
Nothing can hide from its heat.
(--Psalm 19)

The earth submits and survives.

We have not learned yet how to come to earth.

Would that we did know how to live here.

Examining and integrating community.

Dropping out and falling through the center of nothing there.

It is the season of thin places.

What if Jean Gebser is right? What is there's a mutation of consciousness happening? And what if those tasked with administrating the country are not on the list of those open to wisdom and compassion? How do we live with their darkness? How disarm them and secure them from themselves?

I climb the road to Cold Mountain,
The road to Cold Mountain that never ends.
The valleys are long and strewn with stones;
The streams broad and banked with thick grass.
Moss is slippery, though no rain has fallen;
Pines sigh, but it isn’t the wind.
Who can break from the snares of the world
And sit with me among the white clouds?
- Han-shan

These men are in the snare of the world. They shout with glee as their ankles are torn and ripped by their dark desires to rule by fear and greed. Decency, and authentic trust, like torn trees, have been felled.

An Old-Fashioned Song

No more walks in the wood:
The trees have all been cut
Down, and where once they stood
Not even a wagon rut
Appears along the path
Low brush is taking over.

No more walks in the wood;
This is the aftermath
Of afternoons in the clover
Fields where we once made love
Then wandered home together
Where the trees arched above,
Where we made our own weather
When branches were the sky.
Now they are gone for good,
And you, for ill, and I
Am only a passer-by.

We and the trees and the way
Back from the fields of play
Lasted as long as we could.
No more walks in the wood.
(--From Tesserae and Other Poems, by John Hollander)

War-making, like stripping the world of vital resources, is now the primary economic and political sport. There's no stopping the clear-cutting. They are too powerful. The war machine is lubricated. It lurches forward. The die is cast.

I've been thinking about Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin. How hospitality, poverty, personalism, honest labor, green revolution, works of mercy, nonviolence, and prayer are, in their heart and mind. in their world, a better way of being than the ways so facilely chosen today.

Pray, pray, pray -- is what the workers for justice, charity, and holiness say.

It's hard to see the use of it.

So I will do it uselessly.

Pray, that is.

Mutating.

Invisibly.

In-Word.

Philosophy doesn't answer questions. It merely questions.

Spirituality doesn't ensure holiness. It simply asks: Who are you?

Jesus doesn't think the question so many ask is that important -- namely, whether someone has accepted him as their personal lord and savior. He'd rather they accept themselves.

That's the truth.

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?)

And the truth, they say, sets us free.

First, it seems, we have to wrestle.

With it.

Woman at shop looking at full moon says: "With this beauty, how could anyone think of war?"

In the still night by the vacant window,
Wrapped in monk’s robe I sit in meditation.
Navel and nostrils lines up straight;
Ears paired to the slope of the shoulders.
Window whitens – the moon comes up;
Rain’s stopped, but drops go on dripping.
Wonderful – the moon of this moment,
Distant, vast.
- Ryokan (1758–1831)

The men who think of war, who plan and inch toward another horrible incursion, have been lying about beauty.

That's what war is.

It is a lie.

A lie told beauty.

Making everything feel ugly.

As sin.

Damn.

Such.

Lies.

Pity.

Such.

Men.

Rowing skiff from dock in Rockport, passing between Indian Island and Beauchamp shore, out around coastline past lobster buoys, oak leaves, whitecaps, and swells, three and a half hours later between Curtis Island and Camden's shoreline, into harbor slipping by Richard's green boat, tie up, step to dock.

She is like white clouds rising from the mountains,
No-mind from the start.
She is like the roosting bird who feels no longing
For the woods of home.
Because this person of the Way happens to enjoy
The mountains and streams,
She wanders among them unconcerned about how deep
Into the lakeside mountain peaks she goes.
She has gone to the empty cliffs to pay respect to
The hundred thousand forms of the Buddha.
- Su Dongpo (1037–1101)

No time on water. Just dip, pull, lean, stroke, straighten, pause. Then all again.

Let's just try to tell one another something vital.

I will try to say who I am.

You too.

Be still.

And.

Know that.

The job is to be attentive.

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?)

Do you care to listen?

No defense needed.

The world is far stranger than our perception or even our idea of it.

If we lead by aggression we will find ourselves in the fierce complexities of hell. If we follow the way of humility we will understand the simplicity of heaven.

Natural mind like the Autumn moon
Reflected on a clear jade lake.
Nothing like it
How to explain it?
- Han Shan (627–649)

It seems the stony minds and hearts of angry arrogant men will take the road to hell and drag the rest of us with them. (Cheer up, the monk told me, things are only going to get worse.) If we are going to hell, we might as well make the most of it. Hell needs cheerful people alongside the gleeful cynics who think they're going to be rewarded by some god for bringing about the desolation of earth and humanity. They are deluded. God has become human as earth has become the apparel of God. This is a joyful circularity not comprehended by ideological true believers who practice exclusion and derision.

IMAGINING THE WORLD

At the moment, the world is asleep, suffering the dreams of humanity, which have become a nightmare of desecration and pollution. In our hubris we have forgotten that the world is more than our collective projections, that it is more mysterious and strange than our rational minds would like us to believe. Quantum physics has revealed a fluid and unpredictable world, in which consciousness and matter are not separate -- whether a photon of light behaves as a particle or wave depends upon the consciousness of the observer. But we remain within the images of Newtonian physics: matter that is dead, definable, and solid, and consciousness that is objective, safely divorced from the physical world. Matter and spirit remain split, and we continue in the patriarchal fantasy that we can have control over our world.

As we have already seen, the physical world was not always experienced as so isolated. Many cultures have been more concerned with the relationship between the worlds. In the medieval imagination the physical world was just one part of the Great Chain of Being. Medieval cathedrals imaged a symbolic and geometric relationship between the different parts, with the maze that symbolized our journey through this world, mirroring the rose window’s image of a higher reality of light. In the Sufism of Ibn ‘Arabî, the worlds were seen as connected by the symbolic world of the imagination, which acts as a bridge or an “intermediary between the world of Mystery (‘alam al-ghayb) and the world of Visibility (‘alam al-shahadat).”

In their retorts and crucibles the alchemists were working not just with chemical substances but also with the inner energies of life. Their symbolic writings describe both the mixture of tinctures and the marriage of the king and queen, the union of sun and moon. The alchemists took their work seriously, knowing the real responsibility involved. They knew that they were working with a secret substance in life, “mercury” or “quicksilver,” a catalyst that can transform whatever it touches. The way their chemicals changed and transformed imaged how life can be changed with the correct mixture of ingredients. They knew that matter and spirit are not separate. Modern science is now revealing the same thing to us. Yet how the inner and outer worlds relate, and how our consciousness affects the physical world, remain for us still a great mystery.

Once we surrender our safe concept of a separate, static, and defined world, we open to a more dynamic reality in which life is an energy field with which our consciousness and unconscious interact: a pulsating Indra’s Net being continually woven by the soul, through which our consciousness takes on form, our dreams come into being.
(from article by Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee, "Anima Mundi: Awakening the Soul of the World", Published in Sufi Journal, Issue 67, Autumn 2005)

Sophists who claim certitude and prescience about divine deterioration of this world are busy gloating and mocking anyone not on board with them. They are unutterably fixated in their monomaniacal control and possession of the world and its resources. There is no coming home for them. They are far away from their source.

What is needed is a transforming view of this earth, this creation we name matter and humankind. The belief that this world is a mistake must be challenged. The belief that matter is antithetical to divinity must be challenged. The belief that this world is evil and bad must be challenged. These beliefs, and the men holding them, are dangerous. They are dangerous and they are misguided.

We need to know the mysteries of creation as celebrated in the most sacred text of the alchemists, the Emerald Tablet, attributed to Hermes Trismegistos:

"What is below is like that which is above, and what is above is like that which is below, to accomplish the miracles of the one thing."

The light hidden in matter is the one light experienced within the mystery of creation, the hidden treasure revealed through the dance of multiplicity. The creation of the manifest world is a revelation of the hidden nature of the divine, as expressed in the hadith, “I was a hidden treasure and I longed to be known, so I created the world.” But we can only experience the wonder and know the true nature of this revelation through the light hidden within it. Just as He has hidden His secret within us -- “Man is My secret and I am his secret”-- so has He hidden Himself within His creation. Sometimes, in moments amidst the beauty or glory of nature, in the vastness of the stars or the perfection of the early morning dew on a flower, we glimpse this wonder. The light hidden in matter breaks through and we stand in awe before our Creator, as reflected in the words of the poet Gerald Manley Hopkins:

"The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil."

Through this light we can awaken to the divine nature of life and experience the real beauty of His revelation. There is only one light -- “as above so below” -- and yet in His creation He reveals Himself in a way that is not revealed by His transcendent light, the Lumen Dei. What is true for the Creator is also true for us who are “made in His image.” The light that is discovered in the depths of the psyche, through the work on the shadow and the inner alchemical opus, reveals part of our divine nature that is hidden from a purely transcendent consciousness. We come to know ourself and our Beloved in a new way. For each of us this revelation is unique. Part of the wonder of creation is how she offers a different experience to each of us; even the same apple tasted by two people will be a different experience. Through His light we can see life as it really is, in the uniqueness of our own experience of it and not just through the veils of our projections, and so taste the divine uniqueness of each moment. At the same time we experience this uniqueness as part of a greater oneness. We see the threads that connect together all of life; we see how each part reflects the whole.

"Whoever can’t see the whole in every part plays at blind man’s bluff;
A wise man tastes the Tigris in every sip." (Ghalib) (--ibid, Vaughan-Lee)

At essay end Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee quotes poet e.e.cummings awakening us to the simple joy of what is:

i thank You God for most this amazing
day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky;and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes
(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun’s birthday;this is the birth
day of life and of love and wings:and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)
(19 E.E Cummings, Selected Poems 1923-1958, “i thank You God for most this amazing.”)

Night Prayer ends this way this Tuesday:

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.

May the almighty Lord grant us a quiet night and a perfect end.
A M E N

Let's not go to hell with the hell-goers, unless, of course, it is to visit there to bring back all those not wanting to be there.

That would be heavenly!

Right here.

On earth.

Light.

As it is.

In heaven.

I've been reading about Colonel Ted Westhusing.

Op-Ed Columnist Frank Rich introduced his story to me. ("Suicide Is Not Painless", NYTimes Published: October 21, 2007, http://www.nytimes.com/)

The story is reminiscent of Socrates.

What is it about virtue and deceiving greed in the battleground of this world?

The most articulated value in Greek culture is areté. Translated as "virtue," the word actually means something closer to "being the best you can be," or "reaching your highest human potential." The term from Homeric times onwards is not gender specific. Homer applies the term of both the Greek and Trojan heroes as well as major female figures, such as Penelope, the wife of the Greek hero, Odysseus. In the Homeric poems, areté is frequently associated with bravery, but more often, with effectiveness. The man or woman of areté is a person of the highest effectiveness; they use all their faculties: strength, bravery, wit, and deceptiveness, to achieve real results. In the Homeric world, then, areté involves all of the abilities and potentialities available to humans. We can, through the frequent use of this term in Homer's poems, make some tentative conclusions about the early Greek world view. The concept implies a human-centered universe in which human actions are of paramount importance; the world is a place of conflict and difficulty, and human value and meaning is measured against individual effectiveness in the world. (--by Richard Hooker, http://www.wsu.edu/~dee/GLOSSARY/ARETE.HTM)

When the Christ-Reality became human, something shifted in the ontological realm of existence. And yet, the epistemological realm remained dull and uncomprehending. We couldn't see the change. Still can't.

When believers of particular religious doctrines emphasize that all people have to do is accept Jesus Christ as their personal Lord and savior, they are advocating an affirmation that bypasses the epistemological realm and settles into the realm of dogmatic belief. This might be a comforting bypass (knowing and knowledge being oftentimes so troubling) -- still, there's something elemental about wanting to know. Aristotle began his Metaphysics with the words: "ALL men by nature desire to know."

While there were some odd details about his death, the Army's investigation quickly concluded that it was a suicide. An Army psychologist who looked into Westhusing's case concluded that despite his superior intellect, his ability to accept the fact that some Americans were only in Iraq for the money was "surprisingly limited. He could not shift his mindset from the military notion of completing a mission irrespective of cost, nor could he change his belief that doing the right thing because it was the right thing to do should be the sole motivator for businesses."
(--from 'I Am Sullied – No More', Col. Ted Westhusing chose death over dishonor in Iraq, by Robert Bryce, in The Austin Chronicle, http://www.austinchronicle.com/gyrobase/Issue/story?oid=oid%3A469141" )

Belief is not knowledge. Nor is knowledge faith. To know is to be. When we know, really know, it has nothing necessarily to do with head or brain. To know is to embody what is known.

A display of intellectual knowledge is very often used as a substitute for the act of incarnational manifestation.

Mahatma Gandhi, when asked: What do you think of Christianity? Did you consider becoming a Christian? responded:

Please do not flatter yourselves with the belief that a mere recital of that celebrated verse in St. John makes a man Christian. If I have read the Bible correctly, I know many men who have never known the name of Jesus Christ, men who have even rejected the official interpretations of Christianity, but would nevertheless, if Jesus came in our midst today in the flesh, be probably owned by him more than many of us. My position is that it does not matter what faith you practice, as long as the soul longs for truth.
(--Derived from Millie Graham Polak's book Gandhi, The Man. by Jyotsna Kamat)

Something breaks through into existence, this bodily existence, when longing for what is true reaches throughout.

Gaston Bachelard, the French philosopher, wrote about "epistemological rupture."

Epistemology, from the Greek words episteme (knowledge) and logos (word/speech) is the branch of philosophy that deals with the nature, origin and scope of knowledge. Rupture, from Old French ""rupture"" or Latin ""ruptura"" is defined as an instance of breaking or bursting suddenly and completely, as well as a breach of a harmonious link in a figurative way.

The notion of epistemological rupture was introduced by Gaston Bachelard. He proposed that the history of science is replete with "epistemological obstacles"--or unthought/unconscious structures that were immanent within the realm of the sciences, such as principles of division (e.g. mind/body). The history of science, Bachelard asserted, consisted in the formation and establishment of these epistemological obstacles, and then the subsequent tearing down of the obstacles. This latter stage is an epistemological rupture--where an unconscious obstacle to scientific thought is thoroughly ruptured or broken away. (-- from, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epistemological_rupture, )

There's a terrible torture to not being able to stomach the non-virtuous behavior of companions in war, military, business, corporations, schools, monasteries, governments, marriages, and on the streets of our neighborhoods. The idea of virtue is so attractive. Yet, men and women, all of us, disappointingly fall short of any ideal. Some don't even bother to glance in the direction of virtue.

"Nunc lento sonitu dicunt, morieris."

(Now this bell tolling softly for another,
says to me, Thou must die.)
(--from John Donne, Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions, MEDITATION XVII.)

This beautiful October day in Maine, full of warmth and color, is gift.

I think of Col. Ted Westhusing and enter prayer with him. With and for all of us.

Maybe, soon, truth will be "immanent within the realm."

Longingly.

We will know.

And be.

This.

Way.

Areté.

The Holy Spirit is that which is between us,

Without rehearsal, without script, without precedent.

Surprise! The intelligence and revelation of each situation in and of itself.

Far, faraway, steep mountain paths,
Treacherous and narrow, ten thousand feet up;
Over boulders and bridges, lichens of green,
White clouds are often seen soaring,
A cascade suspends in mid-air like a bolt of silk;
The moon’s reflection falls on a deep pool, glittering.
I shall climb up the magnificent mountain peak,
To await the arrival of a solitary crane.
- Shide (8th century)

Union with -- communion -- is the middle wholeness we've come to call the Holy Spirit.

We must not separate ourselves from what-is between us.

Only speak truth through silence.

An Italiano bagel with butter is a good beginning.

I cannot find the Monastery of Heaped Fragrance,
Miles up now into the clouds of the summit.
There is no footpath through the ancient woods.
Where did the bell sound,
Deep in the sound, deep in the mountain?
The voice of the torrent gulps over jagged stones;
Sunlight hardly warms the bluish pines.
As dusk deepens in these unfathomable mazes,
I practice meditation
To subdue the dragon of desire.
- Wang Wei (701–761)

Black tea with milk helps.

Morning Lauds and night silence round the circle.

I am grateful.

For having.

Been.

Alive.

God is one of us.

It is absolutely necessary for you to seek to obtain genuinely accurate insight and understanding. Then you can travel freely anywhere and avoid being confused by the common sort of spiritual charmer. - Lin Chi (d 867?)

Not one of us is God.

God is.

One.

Of us.

Not my-self, but the no-self I am.

We acknowledge Luke today. He wrote early Christian scriptures.

Cure those in it who are sick, and say, “The kingdom of God is very near to you”. (Luke 10:9, Jer.Bib)

Or: Whatever town you enter and they welcome you, eat what is set before you, cure the sick in it and say to them, 'The kingdom of God is at hand for you.' (NAB)

Or: 10:9 And heal the sick that are therein, and say unto them, The kingdom of God is come nigh unto you. (KJB)

The deadliest sickness today is the lie saying we are this or that, never this and that, and (of course) avoiding altogether the revelation we are not-this, not-that.

The writer of Romans 2:11 says: There is no partiality with God.

What is God? God is seeing whole. That one, seeing whole, is no other (than, then) God.

Four thousand days and nights.

For a poem to be born,
we must murder we must murder many
shoot, assassinate, poison
so many whom we love.

Look, for just the bird's quivering tongue from the sky of four thousand nights
and days we shot and killed the silence of four thousand nights
and the contrary rays of the four thousand days.

Listen, for just the tears of one hungry child,
from every city in rain, a blast furnace,
a wharf and a coal mine in midsummer,
we assassinated the love of four thousand days
and the compassion of four thousand nights.

Do not forget, for just the fear of a single wild dog
that sees what our eyes cannot and catches what our ears cannot,
we poisoned the imagination of four thousand nights
and the cold memories of the four thousand days.

For a poem to be written, we must murder our beloved:
this is the only way to bring to life the dead,
and we must walk this way.

(Poem by Tamura Ryuichi, 1923-1998, Translated by Toshiko Fujioka, Tomoyuki Iino, and Jon Silkin)

Do we kill what-is-not to bring life to what is? Is our consciousness so divided and dual that we must let fall (die) that dearness of familiarity so as to be family itself? It is a terrifying consideration.

And yet, and yet, and yet...it is our mind that dies to separation, separation which has nurtured delusion in us for so long.

The ego is "separation" with only three letters.

This morning, not my-self, but the no-self I am.

Very near.

At hand.

Come nigh.

Don't mind me.

On Climbing the Highest Peak of Stone Gate

At dawn with staff in hand I climbed the crags,
At dusk I made my camp among the mountains.
Only a few peaks rise as high as this house,
Facing the crags, it overlooks winding streams.
In front of its gates a vast forest stretches.
While boulders are heaped round its very steps.
Hemmed in by mountains, there seems no way out,
The track gets lost among the thick bamboos.
Deep in meditation, how can I part from Truth?
I cherish the Way and never will swerve from it.
- Xie Lingyun (385–433)

Mind yourself.

It's where I am.

You mind?

If I am here, then, here's looking at you kid!

The mistake has been making two where only one is.

When this Man of Tao left the mountain,
The mountain turned as gray as ashes;
The white clouds hid away their smiles,
And the blue pines were filled with grief.
Suddenly came news of the Man of Tao’s return,
And bird’s song burst open the mountain valleys.
A divine light radiates from his precious temples,
And a dharma rain washes away the swirling dust.
- Su Shih (1073)

The real mystery of Christ-life is how do we come to realize that we are Christ's life?

There's no running away to hide because even the hiding place is Christ's life.

As the rain and the snow come down from the heavens and do not return without watering the earth, making it yield and giving growth to provide seed for the sower and bread for the eating, so the word that goes from my mouth does not return to me empty, without carrying out my will and succeeding in what it was sent to do. (--Isaiah 55:10 - 11, from Office of None)

I used to be taken with the fact that I didn't suffer fools gladly. But that was bull. All I was doing was judging people and not suffering their reality. Not much to be taken for.

"Now," David, visiting from Topsham, said at conversation, "it is time to suffer fools, gladly.

It is refreshing being a fool.

Suffering reality.

Gladly.

Here.

Here.

And here.

Someone wrote to say they walked out on a disturbing film because it was offensive. I sympathize with him. Unfortunately he didn't get to experience the redemptive/reversal of the film ("Crash".)

There are times I want to walk out of things. I have in the past. It's a mixed blessing, walking out.

Elie Wiesel said that we are defined by that which disturbs us, and not by that which reassures us.

Definition is a hard learning.

Go, go, go, said the bird: human kind
Cannot bear very much reality.
Time past and time future
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.

At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless;
Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is,
But neither arrest nor movement.
(--from poem, Burnt Norton, in Four Quartets, by T.S. Eliot, 1935)

It's hard to imagine neither stopping nor moving. Hard to conceive being within the still point.

Who was it said that reality is ok, as long as you go there as a tourist?

The unborn Dharma disappeared in both Japan and China, and it has long since been forgotten. But now it has appeared in the world again. Once you come to know without any doubt that the marvelous illuminative wisdom of the Unborn is the Buddha-mind, and that the Buddha-mind puts all things in perfect order by means of the Unborn, then you can no longer be deluded or led astray by others.
- Bankei (1622-1693)

At times the demand for definition is annoying. Where were you? What do you do? Do you have credentials? Explain yourself! Give an accounting!

It is this statistical obsession with making sure everything between birth and death is accounted for and fractionally reduced to economics or politics.

“We are being infantalized daily. I believe we come into the world as intelligent creatures and we have to be taught to be stupid."(--From The City of Words, 2007 Massey Lectures, by Alberto Manguel, see: http://www.cbc.ca/ideas/massey/massey2007.html)

[I]t is crucial whether questions are posed or answers expounded. For Manguel believes that answers breed dogma and intolerance while questions nurture openness and possibility.
“Answers close us in and literature opens doors and windows for us. It forces us to look further, not be content with what seems like an easy answer,” Manguel said.
“It is, I think, exactly what opposes the arts to the kind of society that we are building -- in which the notion of value is of financial value and is therefore a closed notion. A closed notion, like a closed book, offers no exploration, no ambiguity, and no spaciousness in which to connect with others. And connection is what language, literature, and stories offer us.”

“Distortions are the essence of demagogical and commercial language, intent on 'selling' an idea or product...”
Subtly and gradually the language of literature, which is “complex (and) infinitely capable of enrichment” is replaced by the “short, categorical, imperious” language of advertising or the “static” language of politics. It is an example of the tail wagging the dog as language is transformed into mere slogans and propaganda.
(from Politics, marketing ‘co-opt’ rich language of literature, By MARY JO ANDERSON, Sun. Oct 14, The ChronicleHerald Books, http://thechronicleherald.ca/Books/959226.html)

Some say that words are being denuded.

(de·nude (d-nd, -nyd)
tr.v. de·nud·ed, de·nud·ing, de·nudes
1. To divest of covering; make bare.
2. Geology To expose (rock strata) by erosion.)
(-- The Free Dictionary)

"Being" -- without covering, is eternal and infinite. We've successfully covered "God" in the disguise of a savant with white beard. We've eroded the art of invisibility and silence and fabricated a pastiche of overexposure and noise as that which earns enormous wealth and power for the seen and tattled about.

We've been living and searching in vain, Wiesel says, for "God means movement and not explanation." (--in Legends of Our Time).

I've no explanation.

Let's move with what is itself.

On one, two, three...

It is time to return home.

Home is where there is peace, love, compassion and kindness. Where there is torture there is alienation, hatred, deceit, and ugliness.

It is long past time to return home.

Our moral trajectory over the Bush years could not be better dramatized than it was by a reunion of an elite group of two dozen World War II veterans in Washington this month. They were participants in a top-secret operation to interrogate some 4,000 Nazi prisoners of war. Until now, they have kept silent, but America’s recent record prompted them to talk to The Washington Post.

“We got more information out of a German general with a game of chess or Ping-Pong than they do today, with their torture,” said Henry Kolm, 90, an M.I.T. physicist whose interrogation of Rudolf Hess, Hitler’s deputy, took place over a chessboard. George Frenkel, 87, recalled that he “never laid hands on anyone” in his many interrogations, adding, “I’m proud to say I never compromised my humanity.”

Our humanity has been compromised by those who use Gestapo tactics in our war. The longer we stand idly by while they do so, the more we resemble those “good Germans” who professed ignorance of their own Gestapo. It’s up to us to wake up our somnambulant Congress to challenge administration policy every day. Let the war’s last supporters filibuster all night if they want to. There is nothing left to lose except whatever remains of our country’s good name.
(--The New York Times, Op-Ed Columnist, The ‘Good Germans’ Among Us By FRANK RICH, Published: October 14, 2007 )

There is a no-name God that has no interest in our so-called "good name," nor any interest in the bad name we create in the attempt to prove ourselves far superior to those who shall remain nameless.

He waits as at dusk, bamboo walking stick in hand,
At the headwaters of Tiger Creek,
Leading us on as we listen to mountain echoes,
Following the water’s way.

Patches of wildflowers bloom.
A solitary bird calls from the valley floor.
We sit evening zazen in the empty forest:
Quiet pine winds bring the scent of autumn.
- Wang Wei (710-761)

This past week has been a time of nature. Mountains and rivers, lakes and skies full of passing clouds and shocks of sunlight. Morning moist grass, fragrance of leaf and pine needle filled with crow, squirrel, and chipmunk choral work.

These men that are doing the difficult work of conjuring superiority need to get away for a while, get lost in an empty and nameless eco-sphere, and learn again how to simply look and feel and be the reality for which we search.

I carry your heart with me(i carry it in

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go, my dear;and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)
i fear
no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(I carry it in my heart)
(--Poem: "I carry your heart with me(i carry it in..." by E.E. Cummings from Complete Poems: 1904-1962. © Liveright Publishing Corporation, 1994.)

Today we make way through the northern stretch of Nova Scotia and into New Brunswick towards Maine.

Let's be here -- each and every here -- we are.

No more torture. Let's come home.

We are (can be, and must be) the deepest secret nobody knows.

Hello! Anybody home?

Coming, Mother!

Morning canoe paddling out West Middle River into St Patrick's Channel.

Performance of Celtic Mass for the Sea this afternoon in Mabou.

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 observer.
- Lin Chi (d 867?)

Tonight in New Glasgow with Andre's pizza and 2nd game of Boston vs Cleveland.

It's the fifth. Ramirez and Lowell homer. A new pitcher comes in.

The music stays alive within.

A fine mist shrouds Cape Breton as notes and strings vibrate up and down Cabot Trail.

In everyone it towers like
A mile high wall,
Flashing a great precious light
In everyone’s presence.
One thought ten thousand years,
Ten thousand years one thought,
Eating when hungry,
Sleeping when tired,
Who worries about the alternation
Of light and dark,
The change of the seasons?
- Daio (1235-1309)

We leave wood leaning against fire-can at campsite.

All is well as Celtic Colours draws down.

Every sheltered harbour and rock solid wharf is commitment to the sea.

We voted to allow Maine to become officially part of Atlantic Maritime Provinces.

It was unanimous.

Good move, eh?

Cape Breton fiddlers and guitar players. Canoe paddles in brackish Baddeck Inlet. Hiking boots on mountain trail to white water (Uisge Ban) falls.

Dog, woman, and man in tent on wilderness site.

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?)

Water carried us up river. Water carried us back.

Cesco wants dinner.

What a lovely sky!

Brisk winds at portal to Nova Scotia.

As to the roaming of sages,
They move in utter emptiness,
Let their minds meander in the great nothingness;
They run beyond convention
And go through where there is no gateway.
They listen to the soundless
And look at the formless,
They are not constrained by society
And not bound to its customs.
- Lao-tze

Canadian Thanksgiving is second Monday in October.

Canoe atop, old dog within, green element (frosch) leaves New Brunswick and rests a spell at Amherst.

We are grateful for merely being alive.

Today in Canada.

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?