Maybe there is no stopping.

I'm not saying everything is busy, busy, busy. Just that, maybe, there is no stopping.

The mind of attachment arises from the stopping mind. So does the cycle of transmigration. This stopping becomes the bonds of life and death. Stopping means the mind is being detained by some matter, which may be any matter at all. If there is some thought within the mind, though you listen to the words spoken by another, you will not really be able to hear. This is because your mind has stopped with your own thoughts. When facing a single tree, if you look at a single one of its red leaves, you will not see all the others. When the eye is not set on any one leaf, and you face the tree with nothing at all in mind, any number of leaves are visible to the eye without limit.
- Takuan

Even the Heart Sutra contains the words:

No suffering, no origination,
no stopping, no path, no cognition,
also no attainment with nothing to attain.

Some think meditation is meant to stop thoughts, stop the mind from ushering in thought after thought which we weave into story narrative, jumping on the boat of obsessive replay until we are far down river away from home.

Meditation is meant to help us recognize when we're being carried away by thoughts. It helps to keep us aware of the involuntary departures we make when beckoned by thoughts. This awareness and recognition are gifts of meditation. With them we can return home easier and more quickly.

5 U.S. Soldiers Killed in Iraq, By Richard A. Oppel, Jr., Published: January 29, 2008

BAGHDAD — Five American soldiers were killed in the northern city of Mosul on Monday when militants attacked them with a roadside bomb and then fired on their patrol from a nearby mosque with machine guns, military officials said. The troops returned fire and Iraqi forces raided the mosque, but the gunmen had fled, they said.

It was the second catastrophic attack on United States forces this month, after a house rigged with explosives killed six soldiers in Diyala three weeks ago. The attack underscored the grim situation in Mosul, Iraq's northern hub, which remains a stronghold for Sunni extremist fighters.

In addition, as many as 60 people were killed and 280 wounded in a huge blast in Mosul on Wednesday as Iraqi soldiers entered a building packed with thousands of pounds of explosives. The following day the provincial police chief was assassinated after he visited the site of the blast and an angry crowd of people gathered around him.

Some are taken away suddenly. Taken away and, then, comes grief. The war is still with us. All the distractions of primaries, caucuses, and football championships can only divert those not waiting for phone call or doorbell to sound.


Tonight the President of the United States will deliver his final State of the Union address. Many are pleased it's his last one. I no longer know what to think about the man and the perplexing policies and decisions he's made. I do know my hope we do not see his like anytime soon again.

The war does not stop. The games of sport and games of chance do not stop. The run for the White House does not stop. Our lives, with each breath, however temporary and impermanent, do not stop.

Nor does prayer stop. Nor meditation. Neither does conversation about what kind of person, what kind of world we long to manifest.

Today is the feast of Thomas Aquinas.

St Thomas Aquinas (1225 - 1274)
He was born of a noble family in southern Italy, and was educated by the Benedictines. In the normal course of events he would have joined that order and taken up a position suitable to his rank; but he decided to become a Dominican instead. His family were so scandalised by this disreputable plan that they kidnapped him and kept him prisoner for over a year; but he was more obstinate than they were, and he had his way at last.
He studied in Paris and in Cologne under the great philosopher St Albert the Great. It was a time of great philosophical ferment. The writings of Aristotle, the greatest philosopher of the ancient world, had been newly rediscovered, and were becoming available to people in the West for the first time in a thousand years. Many feared that Aristotelianism was flatly contradictory to Christianity, and the teaching of Aristotle was banned in many universities at this time – the fact that Aristotle’s works were coming to the West from mostly Muslim sources did nothing to help matters.
Into this chaos Thomas brought simple, straightforward sense. Truth cannot contradict truth: if Aristotle (the great, infallible pagan philosopher) appears to contradict Christianity (which we know by faith to be true), then either Aristotle is wrong or the contradiction is in fact illusory. And so Thomas studied, and taught, and argued, and eventually the simple, common-sense philosophy that he worked out brought an end to the controversy. Out of his work came many writings on philosophy and theology, including the Summa Theologiae, a standard textbook for many centuries and still an irreplaceable resource today. Out of his depth of learning came, also, the dazzling poetry of the liturgy for Corpus Christi. And out of his sanctity came the day when, celebrating Mass, he had a vision that, he said, made all his writings seem like so much straw; and he wrote no more.
Let us pray for the Holy Spirit to inspire us, like St Thomas, to love God with our minds as well as our hearts; and if we come across a fact or a teaching that seems to us to contradict our faith, let us not reject it but investigate it: for the truth that it contains can never contradict the truth that is God.
(--from Universalis, http://www.universalis.com/)

Straw. Straw ideas. Straw men. Straw ambition.

I'll listen to that final address. Maybe.

It'll be, with luck, the last straw.

Whatever happens, the only thing we have any say about is our response to it.

"Absolute perfection is here and now, not in some future, near or far. The secret is in action - here and now. It is your behavior that blinds you to yourself. Disregard whatever you think yourself to be and act as if you were absolutely perfect - whatever your idea of perfection may be. All you need is courage."
(--Nisargadatta Maharaj)

Wandering through this monastery without walls, I greet and bow to so many members of the community.

Handful here, handful there -- monks of no order become monastics of no other.

All on their own.

Only this is certain.

What is this?

Can you imagine a world without certainty?
The wind rises the wind falls.

The gravels of the world,
the stones of the world
are in their proper places.

The vast, writhing
worms of the sea
are in their places.

The white gulls
on the wet rocks
are in their places.

is certainty.
(--from section 1 of poem Gravel, by Mary Oliver)

This is the thing about enlightenment: It is what it is! You're there. Try to see this. No, just see this!

We don't seem to realize we exist on planes and dimensions vast and parallel. Like this morning's sunlight issuing through crystal orb hanging in meditation room window; this through-which-itself scattered in color on ceiling, wall, and rug.

Issuing forth as one another from source shared.

10

This the poem of goodbye.
And this is the poem of don't know.

My hands touch the lilies
then withdraw;

my hands touch the blue iris
then withdraw;

and I say, not easily but carefully—
the words round in the mouth, crisp on the tongue—

dirt, mud, stars, water— I know you as if you were myself.

How could I be afraid?
(--section 10, from Gravel, by Mary Oliver)

Let's reflect what we are.

Let's fearlessly reflect one another.

For the love of God.

Never mind, for now, the near-death experience.

Most of us are looking for a near-life experience.

As you discuss the skill in means here, you will think: “My physical body, composed of the four elements, was obviously born from my father and mother. At some unspecified time it is sure to decompose. What then was my original face before my father and mother were born?” (- T’aego)

I'm not alive, not really and not fully, as long as I hide from who I really am, lie about myself, or fail to accept and forgive who you are.

Yet, there are glimpses. Brief insights into what might be true nature. Fleeting and temporary.

A near-life experience reminds how far from being alive I am.

Even now, this cold night, I wander between. Near-life; near-death.

Unaccountably unafraid; neither of one nor of the other.

Facing both.

Sometimes we rest.

Sheltering.

Waiting.

Winter.

Out.

When transparency comes, all space will be seen through as holiness.

Until then, we turn into darkened walkways with as much resolve as possible.

Dark, dark my light, and darker my desire.
My soul, like some heat-maddened summer fly,
Keeps buzzing at the sill. Which I is I?
A fallen man, I climb out of my fear.
The mind enters itself, and God the mind,
And one is One, free in the tearing wind.
(--from poem In a Dark Time, by Theodore Roethke)

It's only an illusion, they say, Yet, the separation feels real.

Maybe it's not.

The Buddhist teacher said of happiness or equilibrium, best to choose the latter. The still point.

It's like the center of a seesaw. There's movement at each end and close up, but at the center -- only the center.

The Second Patriarch Hui-k’o stood in the snow, cut off his arm, and awakened. The Sixth Patriarch heard someone recite the Diamond Sutra phrase, “arouse the mind without its abiding anywhere,” and he awakened. Ling-yun saw a peach blossom and awakened. Hsiang-yen heard a tile fragment strike bamboo, and he awakened. Lin-chi was given sixty blows by Huang-po, and he awakened. Tung-shan noticed his own reflection when he was crossing a river, and he awakened. In each case, these men met their Master.
- Daito

It doesn't matter who wants to be president. The powerful play power. What matters is something more important. What matters is meeting the one who will lead you to the drop.


The drop through the center. Where nothing holds and nothing falls. It's where no opposite exists.

Where nothing else is.

Not even you.

And that's that.

Watching Charles Ferguson's No End in Sight. About the invasion and occupation of Iraq. The unexplainable stupidity of the American administration.

Some time after Charlotte's death, O'a brought us her prayer banner. We have much mud to ponder.

The Vajra Guru mantra is, “Om Ah Hung Benzar Guru Padmé Siddhi Hung.” It is the mantra of Padma Sambhava, the Lotus-born Guru, the Indian master who brought Buddhism to Tibet in the eighth century. Tibetans call Padma Sambhava the Second Buddha, the Buddha of Tibet. So the mantra starts with, “Om Ah Hung; then it says Benzar, or Vajra, Guru Padmé. That’s like saying, “Homage to the diamond master, born in the lotus.” Padmé is lotus. Siddhis mean spiritual powers, like love, wisdom, compassion, forgiveness, enlightenment. So the meaning is, “Homage to the enlightened powers of the Lotus-born Guru.” It’s a way of affirming that the lotus grows and flourishes out of the mud of one’s own nature. Those enlightened powers grow in the mud of our own base nature. Human nature is like the tip of the vast iceberg of Buddha-nature.
(--from New Dharma Talks, Mantras, June 2003, http://www.dzogchen.org/teachings/talks/ndt03.htm/)

I suppose I cannot think of Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and Rice without thinking of my own stupidity and callousness. They bring to me the memory of all that is arrogant and insensitive.

These people make me ashamed of myself.

I must change my life.

These teachers.

Demand it.

The man in Sound of the Soul said, "Spirituality is enlightening one another."

If you misunderstand your mind, you are an ordinary person; if you realize your mind, you are a sage. There is no difference at all whether man, woman, old, young, wise, foolish, human, animal, whatever. Thus, in the Lotus of Truth assembly, was it not the eight year old Naga girl who went directly south to the undefiled world Amala, sat on a jewel lotus flower, and realized universal complete enlightenment?
- Jakushitsu Genko

There has never been a sole enlightened person.

No one lives alone. No one dies alone.

Get over it!

We're in this together.

When the music festival at Fez, Morocco, appears on film tomorrow, the following question might be raised: Perhaps music, song, art, dance and spirit are greater unifiers of world traditions and peoples than scriptures, thought, dogma and doctrine. Are we on the brink of recognizing one another through metaphor, sound, movement, and color -- a universal understanding without translation?

The state we call Realization is simply
Being one’s self,
Not knowing anything or
Becoming anything.
If one has realized,
One is that which alone is and
Which alone has always been.
One cannot describe that state,
But only be That.
Of course, we loosely talk
Of Self-realization for want of a better term.
- Ramana Maharshi

By being that, we become this -- without reason or explanation -- intimate relation.

Concluding Prayer
In your love, Lord, answer the prayers of your people:
make us see what we have to do
and give us the strength to do it.

Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,
who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
God for ever and ever.
Amen. (--from Office of Readings)

To see. That's worth praying.

Never mind the knowing and reciting, the behooving and amen amen I say to you. No suras or sutras, no litanies no oaths no salaaming or shaloming no reverends or imams masters or priests, no rabbis no elders no missionaries no acolyte's.

You Must Be Present to Win
There is a sign outside a casino in Las Vegas that says, "You must be present to win." The same is true in meditation. If we want to see the nature of our lives, we must actually be present, aware, awake. Developing samadhi [concentration] is much like polishing a lens. If we are looking to see the cells and workings of the body with a lens that has not been ground sufficiently, we will not see clearly. In order to penetrate the nature of the mind and body, we must collect and concentrate our resources and observe with a steady, silent mind. This is exactly what the Buddha did: he sat, concentrated his mind, and looked within. To become a yogi, an explorer of the heart and mind, we must develop this capacity as well.
(--Jack Kornfield, Seeking the Heart of Wisdom, from Everyday Mind, edited by Jean Smith, a Tricycle book)

"So then," asked the man in prison Friday," what keeps us from feeling and acting with empathy for everyone in the world?"

He asks the question worth asking.

No simple answers need apply.

In fact, no answers at all will be received.

This question demands twirling in an empty square; listening along a winter river; splashing color on a blank canvas; looking long and hard at nothing in particular; nodding attentively to the one before you.

This one asks for a far deeper presence than any answer can give.

No one translation.

Understanding.

Itself.

Alone.

Eat spinach every day. And a banana.

Soundless Sound

I like bamboo as the symbol
Of constancy and simplicity.
I built my house deep within the grove.
Do not strike my bamboo with a piece of brick.
Perhaps the sound might be
Heard by other Zen monks
And cause trouble.
- Jakushitsu (1290–1368)

Chew quietly.


No need to confuse anybody with the suspicion you're interested in health.

Sometimes what appears to be conversation is monologue.

Someone we know is diagnosed with depressive cancer. He lives alone. His monologue is a conversation. His busy mind conducts every square millimeter of space into a place of inquiry and complaint. We send a message he is in our prayer. And he is.

Good friends, if you would cultivate imperturbability, just whenever you see people, do not see their right or wrong, good or bad, faults or troubles; then your own nature is immovable. Good friends, even though the bodies of deluded people be immobile, yet when they open their mouths to speak of the right and wrong, strengths and weaknesses, good and bad of other people, they turn away from the path. If you cling to mind or cling to purity, this veils the truth.
What is called sitting meditation? In this way there is no obstruction, no impediment. When outwardly, in the midst of all pleasant or unpleasant realms, thoughts do not arise in the mind, this is called “sitting.” Inwardly to see that one’s own nature does not move is called “meditation.”
- Hui-neng (638-713)

In "No Exit" Sartre wrote "Hell is other people." Does that suggest that heaven is no-other? Not in the sense of vacuity, but that if you see "no-other" you are seeing heaven as singular expression of lovely what-is.

St Antony, Abbot (251 - 356) is considered the founder of monasticism.

He lived to be over a hundred years old, and died in 356.
The Gospels are full of wise sayings of Jesus that seem to be ignored, and one of the most poignant of these was in his meeting with that young man who asked over and over again, insistently, “What must I do to have eternal life?”. When, in the end, Jesus told him that if he wanted to be perfect he would have to sell all that he had and give the money to the poor, the young man went away, sorrowing; because he was very rich. What could be more of a waste than that? You tell someone what he has to do, and he is afraid to do it. And yet... 250 years later, St Antony hears the story, and does give away all that he has, and becomes the founder of monasticism. And then again, over 1,000 years later, St Francis of Assisi hears the story, and gives away his possessions (and some of his father’s) and revolutionises Christianity again.
Not all the words that we speak are forgotten, even though we cannot see their effects ourselves. Let us pray that those unknown effects may always be good ones.
(--from Universalis.com)

In the desert there were many monks. There were, no doubt, many mad monks. We're all a bit mad. If someone cries out to God, are they mad? When purpose and meaning seem less and less, are we mad? When no-other appears in the emptiness of just this and this, is that madness?

So many madmen and madwomen! We cry for God; God hears the cry; God is the one crying. The balm and calming resurrecting realization that comes over us time to time is the fact God is no-other. I'd ask what that means, no-other, but it's not meaning nor is it purpose surrounds the realization of true mature no-other.

It's just that everything is itself and, as well, that which is beyond itself. Particular facts, jottings of instances that pretend they're not the whole ball of rubber bands -- when they are.

What's In My Journal

Odd things, like a button drawer. Mean
Thing, fishhooks, barbs in your hand.
But marbles too. A genius for being agreeable.
Junkyard crucifixes, voluptuous
discards. Space for knickknacks, and for
Alaska. Evidence to hang me, or to beatify.
Clues that lead nowhere, that never connected
anyway. Deliberate obfuscation, the kind
that takes genius. Chasms in character.
Loud omissions. Mornings that yawn above
a new grave. Pages you know exist
but you can't find them. Someone's terribly
inevitable life story, maybe mine.
(-- Poem: "What's In My Journal" by William Stafford, from Crossing Unmarked Snow, Harper Collins, 1981.)

No one's fooled.

God is in the details.

Every one of them.

I sit quietly.

Listening to the falling leaves.
A lonely hut, a life of renunciation.
The past has faded,
Things are no longer remembered.
My sleeve is wet with tears.
- Ryokan (1758-1831)

To renounce is to give up. "I give up" for a renunciate means letting go of attachment to what is not essential.

The essential is what is core, source, true nature, of itself, in itself. What is essential is no other. Just what is there. Besides that, too many words.

I'd rather be quiet.

If we are defined by that which disturbs us, and we find that nothing disturbs us, do we have no definition? Second to that -- is the opposite of the definite the infinite?

When we practice zazen [Zen meditation] our mind always follows our breathing. When we inhale, the air comes into the inner world. When we exhale, the air goes to the outer world. The inner world is limitless, and the outer world is also limitless. We say "inner world" or "outer world," but actually there is just one whole world. In this limitless world, our throat is like a swinging door. The air comes in and goes out like someone passing through a swinging door. If you think, "I breathe," the "I" is extra. There is no you to say "I." What we call "I" is just a swinging door which moves when we inhale and when we exhale. It just moves; that is all. When your mind is pure and calm enough to follow this movement, there is nothing: no "I," no world, no mind nor body; just a swinging door. (--Shunryu Suzuki, Zen Mind, Beginners Mind from Everyday Mind)

There is only breath breathing. Sitting in shadow the meditator contemplates each breath as being just what it is.

Love Minus Zero/No Limit

My love she speaks like silence,
Without ideals or violence,
She doesn't have to say she's faithful,
Yet she's true, like ice, like fire.
People carry roses,
Make promises by the hours,
My love she laughs like the flowers,
Valentines can't buy her.

In the dime stores and bus stations,
People talk of situations,
Read books, repeat quotations,
Draw conclusions on the wall.
Some speak of the future,
My love she speaks softly,
She knows there's no success like failure
And that failure's no success at all.

The cloak and dagger dangles,
Madams light the candles.
In ceremonies of the horsemen,
Even the pawn must hold a grudge.
Statues made of match sticks,
Crumble into one another,
My love winks, she does not bother,
She knows too much to argue or to judge.

The bridge at midnight trembles,
The country doctor rambles,
Bankers' nieces seek perfection,
Expecting all the gifts that wise men bring.
The wind howls like a hammer,
The night blows cold and rainy,
My love she's like some raven
At my window with a broken wing.

(Song by Bob Dylan, Copyright 1965)

We often seem silly -- our sorrows and our seriousness. The fears we hold about loss and disgrace. We worry about not being able to control the finite circumstances of bodily needs -- food, shelter, clothing, transportation, heating fuel, our children.

Our perception is clouded and unfocused. We want someone to show us the way. If we are the way, we want someone to show us ourselves. It is too difficult seeing for ourselves.

"If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is, infinite." (--William Blake)

On earth.

As it is.

In heaven.

Sometimes silent sitting resembles what could be imagined as death.

It is not death. Nor is death an imagined thing. Silent sitting is only silent sitting. Imagination is something else. It happens of itself. As does, I suspect, death. In the presence of imagination, silence, or death, I am astonished. That I am, or you are, or this is. Astonished!

Wittgenstein said that with death, the world does not alter, but comes to an end. He said that death is not an event in life, that we do not live to experience death. "There are, indeed, things that cannot be put into words. They make themselves manifest. They are what is mystical." (Proposition 6.522, from Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, by Ludwig Wittgenstein)

Mystical: 1 a: having a spiritual meaning or reality that is neither apparent to the senses nor obvious to the intelligence mystical food of the sacrament> b: involving or having the nature of an individual's direct subjective communion with God or ultimate reality mystical experience of the Inner Light>
(-Merriam-Webster)

Each day we pray for those who are dying, those who will die today, and all those who have died, especially those with no one to pray for or remember them. Then we say the Our Father, asking that what is "as it is" in heaven will be "as it is" also on earth.

When truly sought even the seeker cannot be found.
Thereupon the goal of the seeking is attained,
And the end of the search.
At this point there is nothing more to be sought,
And no need to seek anything.
- Padmasambhava, (Daily Zen)

What are we looking for? Kids on corners looking out for police. Lobbyists looking left and right with their money. Soldier behind automatic weapon acutely aware of every movement. Women and men at red lights taking the only pause of their crowded day. Monk in solitude gazing at nothing.

Which One

I eye the driver of the Chevrolet
pulsing beside me at a traffic light

the chrome-haired woman in the checkout line
chatting up the acned clerk

the clot of kids smoking on the sly
in the Mile-Hi Pizza parking lot

the meter reader, the roofer at work
next door, a senior citizen

stabbing the sidewalk with his three-pronged cane.
Which one of you discarded in a bag

—sealed with duct tape—in the middle of the road
three puppies four or five weeks old

who flung two kittens from a moving car
at midnight into a snowbank where

the person trailing you observed the leg
and tail of the calico one that lived

and if not you, someone flossing her teeth
or watering his lawn across the street.

I look for you wherever I go.
(Poem: "Which One" by Maxine Kumin, from Jack and Other New Poems. W.W. Norton, 2006. The Writer's Almanac)

I like the old phrase: "I'm looking out for you." Someone watching out for us is a useful ambiguity. Will we be found? Will I be protected? Do we thank someone? Or worry they're closing in on us?

The boy looks out from a mountain in Austria. The dog, from a mountain overlooking Penobscot Bay. The gentleman in the photo looks from a rise over reservoir in Granville. Of the three, only the boy remains manifest.

Before going to bed, brief silent sitting in front room. A foot of snow, and still falling.

It's right here, at hand, under foot.

No need to seek anything.

In the film The Son of Man, made in South Africa in 2006, Jesus says to the man who has just said "I'm going to kill you," something like the following: "How long will it take you?" or, "How quickly can you do it?" The words sound smart and brazen. Maybe they're something else.

Evening mountains veiled in somber mist,
One path entering the wooded hill:
The monk has gone off, locking his pine door.
From a bamboo pipe a lonely trickle of water flows.
- Ishikawa Jozan (1583-1672)

Maybe Jesus is asking the power-brokers how long do they think it would take to kill a radical belief in the goodness of man? How quickly can truth be dispersed and disappeared? Is there enough energy and time in the universe to uproot the essential nature of the cosmos?

They prefer to hear Jesus' question as a smart ass retort. That would fall within their experience and comprehension. But perhaps Jesus is taking the long view. Maybe he sees something beyond their limited vision -- something for those who long for hope.

We like the idea of sturdy trust in the essential foundation of reality. Like the biblical emphasis on the breath-word of creation. The Holy Spirit itself weaving the wholeness we cannot fathom nor can we disassemble.

Evil, some might say, perpetrates division. The person of good heart invites indivision. The sole-seeing wholeness, the soul-seen holiness -- these are the elements of the courage of the Christ in and through time.

Love After Love

The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other's welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.
(Poem by Derek Walcott)

The winter meditation room is set up in front room of house in a flurry before arrival of first car. Chapel/zendo cabin will be for solitary mice the duration of cold months on Sunday evenings. Someone might wish a winter silent retreat. The mice have said this is acceptable. The peace dove 'open' flag is again torn by hard winds but says it will endure its invitation through Maine's 1st quarter of 2008. Zafus brought in make semi-circle with seiza bench and Charlotte's foot-rest-become-sitting-bench turning out from window altar.

We look in and bow each time we descend stairs. We see ourselves in its spacious gift of itself for us.

At table of Sunday Evening Practice, Symphony No. 3, Op. 36, first movement, composed by Henryk Górecki in 1976, using Walcott's poem as Lectio, a lovely interlude of listening.

It would take a very long time to undo the loveliness done unto us with God's love, to unhear the sound of our own name, to undream a dream that is now material flesh and blood.

Snow Monday.

You can't kill life itself. You can only attempt to kill the idea of life itself. The thought of such killing drives men and women into paroxysms of fear of self and others.

Real love steps into itself facing oneself with goodness born of itself.

I'd like one of those.

Indivison, please!

Out of nothing else, this.

That's my translation.

Genesis 1
1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
2 Now the earth was [a] formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.
3 And God said, "Let there be light," and there was light.
4 God saw that the light was good, and He separated the light from the darkness.
(--New International Version)

From darkness, light. From nothingness, something. From wholeness, separation? (Can that last one be right!)

There is no help in changing
Your environment.
The obstacle is the mind,
Which must be overcome,
Whether at home or in the forest.
If you can do it in the forest,
Why not in the home?
Therefore, why change the environment?
- Ramana Maharshi

It's all about translation. It's about mind. And the mind we mostly use is a dualistic mind. But what if we employed a non-dualistic mind?

What if there was nothing else? No "other" place, or other thing, no other separate making of two against which to contrast what it is wished to be emphasised, to be the focus of a beneficent act?

This place, this person, this action, this planet, this existence -- is not other than itself. Itself is the core and extension of itself in alternating expression of itself expanding into what it is becoming.

Today, this intuition: Out of nothing else, this.

I'm glad to be here.

Doing this.

Nothing else.

It is late.

Rain ran through the day. Some lightning. Raw. At Rankin's Hardware we pick up stove pipe. Wrong size. Will try again tomorrow. Kept shop closed. Prison first thing: Protective Custody Unit; Buddhist Group; Regular Meetingbrook Education Group. In the hallway one of the men shares Yale Review poem with me. In room talk of Obama and primaries. In BG young man wants to know if once a drug dealer, then getting enlightenment, do you become an enlightened drug dealer? In PC, reading NYTimes Magazine's Lives They Lived, two soldiers who'd published account of Iraq seldom heard, died in IED blast. In RMEG, story of shy Harlem blogger who was fierce in print.

Where subject and object are realized
As a single sphere
Happiness and sorrow mingle as one
Whatever circumstances I encounter,
I am free in the blissful realm
Of self-awakening Wisdom.
- Milarepa

At the shop Sunday, Hugh sat awhile as I started the fire in wood stove. I reminded him of his painting ustairs in the Harbor Room. "I know, I know," he growled, "I want it to stay here for now." We're delighted to have it. From Greece, a rudder from classic sailing vessel, he says it befits our place. "The most important part of a ship isn't its engine nor its guns," he says. "It's the rudder. That's why I left it here." After a bit he gets up to go. "I'm glad I stopped in," he says. "Me too," I say. As he leaves I think about how many people I've known in their eighties. I like them.

If we forget that in every criminal there is a potential saint, we are dishonoring all of the great spiritual traditions. Saul of Tarsus persecuted and killed Christians before becoming Saint Paul, author of much of the New Testament. Valmiki, the revealer of the Ramayana, was a highwayman, a robber, and a murderer. Milarepa, one of the greatest Tibetan Buddhist gurus, killed thirty- seven people before he became a saint. Moses, who led the Jews out of bondage in Egypt, began his spiritual career by killing an Egyptian. If we forget that Charles Manson is capable of transformation, that doesn't reveal our lack of confidence in Manson, it shows our lack of confidence in our own scriptures. We must remember that even the worst of us can change.

Over the past twenty years I've had the privilege of knowing thousands of people who did horrible things and yet were able to transform their lives. They may not have become saints, but I have seen murderous rage gradually humbled into compassion, lifelong racial bigotry replaced by true brotherhood, and chronic selfishness transformed into committed altruism. The promises of every great spiritual tradition are indeed true: Our deepest nature is good, not evil.
(--from, Seven Ways to Fix the Criminal Justice System, by Bo Lozoff, from Renaissance Universal, http://www.ru.org/artseven.html)

So much is the luck of the draw. So, let's not put much stock in how good we are, or how noble, or how we've managed to live an upstanding life. I'm amused by the theater of righteousness played out on the street. It's not that simple. There's something else at work. It might be called luck, or grace -- but spare us the innuendo of holier than thou. Bad news can happen to any one of us on any Tuesday following any Monday. That's when life jump-starts. When chair has been kicked out from under and we swing with the will of something we did not envision -- then?

We'll talk then.

In the meantime, how do you like them Patriots? Who'll take Michigan primary? Do ya think Roger Clemens didn't really get juiced? Will there be a recession?

When the time appears we really have to talk, let's pray we'll have the courage to show up.

It'll be a nice change.

Thought is seeing what is, as it is, now.

The clouds of sunset
Gather in the western sky,
And over the silent silvery Han
Rises a white jade moon.
Not often does life
Bring such beauty.
Where shall I see the moon
Next year?
- Su T’ung-Po (1037-1101)

Bald Mountain appears. I look out from dooryard and there it is. Never before. And, the thought occurs, never again.

Sometimes there's confusion about thought. Real thought is akin to pure seeing. And then there are those thoughts which mechanically stagger through and grab at our brains like sticky fingers sorting down feathers into small plastic refrigerator bags.

Pure seeing, or mere seeing, is thought without content. When what is seen is hardened at the edges by erroneous opinion of repetition, that hardened thought becomes a concept or a fixed opinion. Concepts, when hardened further, become beliefs. And beliefs are the separating protection we cultivate against seeing things new and now.

Origin-al thought, (which is prior to ossification and beyond repetition), is seeing what is, as it is, now.

Maria sang the praise of mind and thought. Loren composed a strophe of counter-balance. And the bookshop became a concert hall of something seen.

Saskia makes burgers and salad. She says she can't think of what she'd said from behind the bakery case where she stood with Delia. I'd asked her in the kitchen what she'd said earlier.

Nineteen folks attended Thursday Evening Conversation.

"Something about distractions," she says.

Then, just like that, she says: "I'm dishing out."

A lovely thought!

"History," Chris said at the shop after playing a classical piece on the piano, "history is the hope," Think Soviet Union, Rome, Hitler's horror. Now our folly. History remedies. Insanity collapses and goes away. Blood, sorrow, and drought of justice. Still -- the self-assured offenders go away. However cemented in their resolve, whatever the looting, they go away.

Listening to Snow

Cold night, no wind, bamboo making noises,
Noises far apart, now bunched together,
Filtering the pine-flanked lattice.
Listening with ears is less fine
Than listening with the mind.
Beside the lamp I lay
Aside the half scroll of sutra
- Daito

We listen to snow and to 6.77 billion human paths to the One We Call God. (Not to mention however many sentient beings and instances of consciousness there are on this planet alone -- can anyone count that high?)


Practice, for me, is listening. There's no one way. Way is as we are -- many.

Every way is one to follow.

It's not what we think.

January turns warm. Snow and ice from last week drip in sunlight. Impermanence takes a bow, turns corner, and disappears.

New moon with new moon energy falls into its own emptiness and we are mute as monks whose prayer has gone missing.

The Way is vast and without favor.
The all-empty Tao is profound.
With an empty heart,
Its nature is easily learned,
Though its power encompasses the cosmos.
With its wisdom one may discern
Life’s great mysteries,
So that the heart may become pure
As the throne of the immortals.
- Loy Ching-Yuen (1873-1960)

Richard's daughter writes to say there are two four year old Siamese cats looking for a home. I say I'll keep a look out. Anyone? Richard's death leaves them wanting.

Candidates for presidency run hard at each other. We choose leaders with the roughshod panache of stock car demolition derby.

Watching film about GDR and Stasi gloom of mistrust. Awkward to imagine something similar here. The cost of security is very very dear. Alan Watts wrote a book entitled The Wisdom of Insecurity.

Sometimes the deepest prayer is the empty silence that surrounds nothing to say.

Nothing other than what is itself.

Our koan: Embodying the dwelling-place of the Alone; Stepping aside to make room for Another.

Is gratitude ever exhausted?

Lobster boat enters harbor. Two seagulls fly low tide cavern southeast. Dripping water from rooftop falls through four bells from Baptist steeple. Red flash from northeast channel marker. Mini-tug Barbi D is postage stamp below covered yachts on the hard above her. Day descends to dusk.

The wind is the breath of heaven and earth.
Into every corner it unfolds and reaches;
Without choosing between high or low,
Exalted or humble, it touches everywhere.
- Song Yu (290-223 BCE)

Winter is its own harbor. Forty three degree overcast melts white into grey and shadow. The kings have come and gone. Whatever it was they saw at end of their search they keep to themselves. As they must. As, too, we.

Imagine a very poor man living in a decrepit little shanty, the only thing he owns in the world. What he does not know is that just beneath his shanty, but hidden in the dirt, is an inexhaustible vein of gold. As long as he remains ignorant of his hidden wealth, this pauper remains in poverty; but when he attends more closely to his own dwelling, he is bound to discover his own fathomless wealth. Similarly, all we need to do is unveil our own nature, and we will find an inexhaustible source of wisdom, compassion, and power. It is nothing we need to acquire, from anywhere or anything. It has always been there. Seen in this light, the Buddha-nature requires no additions. One does not have to memorize sutras, recite prayers or accumulate virtues to create it. All one needs to do is unveil it. (--B. Alan Wallace, Tibetan Buddhism from the Ground Up) from Everyday Mind, edited by Jean Smith, a Tricycle book

The Gospels say the Magi arrive with gifts and leave with mystery. What had they found? We can only imagine. Authors have, composers and painters too. Today, we are left to our own narrative. Scripture doesn't belong to the past. Each narrative is contemporaneous revelation. What is under our feet? What unveiling now?

In conversation the other day I noted a situation that felt unusual. I find my faith is without content. There is no satisfaction of moral statements, dogmatic tenets, or theological beliefs. Yet, there is faith -- if you will -- profound faith. It is a faith that resides on its own.

I suspect everything resides on its own. This is not to infer an absence of community or sangha. I reside on my own. You do. And, (if you will), God resides on God's own. Everything resides on one's own in the same way everything belongs to itself. "Itself" is that which is without separation.

Prayer is the inquiry toward finding one's place within the longing and belonging of each being in existence as itself.

One's own.

Sleeping loon. Dusking day. Deceasing individuals. Melting snow.

To be on one's own -- for today -- is to reside in the reality of no-other.

Attending.

More closely.

One's own dwelling.

For a year at Friday Evening Conversation we've been reading, enjoying, and conversing afterwards inspired by the writings of John O'Donohue. First Anam Cara, then Eternal Echoes -- which we finished the last Friday of 2007. John O'Donohue died at 53 in his sleep three days ago in France.

A BLESSING FOR EQUILIBRIUM.

Like the joy of the sea coming home to shore,
May the music of laughter break through your soul.

As the wind wants to make everything dance,
May your gravity be lightened by grace.

Like the freedom of the monastery bell,
May clarity of mind make your eyes smile.

As water takes whatever shape it is in,
So free may you be about who you become.

As silence smiles on the other side of what’s said,
May a sense of irony give you perspective.

As time remains free of all that it frames,
May fear or worry never put you in chains.

May your prayer of listening deepen enough
To hear in the distance the laughter of God.
(--By John O’Donohue, from Benedictus or, To Bless the Space Between Us – A Book of Blessings’)

Schooners at head of harbor hibernate. It's like that with death. Passengers are gone. Decks are wrapped and sealed. It is season of rising and lowering tide. A sort of inward and outward breath belonging to the breathing cosmos. Then a gap. Hiatus. A pause with no promise of anything else.

Meister Eckhart called it "Leben ohne warum," or, Life without the question why. No "What now?" No "He's happier elsewhere."

It has been surprising of late to consider that this is it. No need for anything else -- an afterlife, or whatever language is put on an "over there" or "eternal reward." No more. For now, just this life as sufficient. Nothing else. Just the joy of being here, and for so long a time. Just the joy.

At church today, hearing the "now and forever" at end of the Our Father, the realization that these are not contrasting words. "Now" and "forever" are the same reality.

I'm happy with nothing else.

Cat flicks tail on cushion as Saskia crunches numbers. Sunday Evening Practice is done, dishes washed, and cars gone from dooryard.

We're grateful for the gifted words John gave us.

May he rest well. In peace. Where all is wonderfully caring in itself.

A gentle gratitude of laughter.

Why live as miser?

I ask this when misery seems what I cultivate.

As a mean, grasping person I remain enclosed in small notion of self.

Conditioning, without benefit of awareness, isolates and clings.

Patch-robed monks make
Their thinking dry and cool
And rest from the remnants of
Conditioning.
Persistently brush up and sharpen
This bit of the field.
Spiritual and bright,
Vast and lustrous,
Illuminating fully what is
Before you, directly attain
The shining light and clarity
That cannot attach to a single defilement.
- Hongzhi Zhengjue (1091-1157)

When conditioned, be aware of conditioning. Then, perhaps, conditioning no longer rules from hiding.


Curtis Island keeps to itself in outer harbor. From outside edge, there is no harbor, but open bay. Swells lengthen. Depth plummets. There's a sense of basic trust called for, humbly relied upon. Seal and loon eye and vigil the stranger passing. Bell buoy tolls uncounted lifts, alteration, and sway of clappers clanging tide and wind in cathedral sea.

How many ashes of deceased have taken final entry here? Sacred sound invokes stirring solitude. This is why we row alone. This also why even on land the monastic church is home and sanctuary.

But when the kindness and love of God our saviour for mankind were revealed, it was not because he was concerned with any righteous actions we might have done ourselves: it was for no reason except his own compassion that he saved us, by means of the cleansing water of rebirth and by renewing us with the Holy Spirit...
(--Titus 3:4-5)

In a poem recalled at Saturday afternoon's Poetry, Tea, and Literature, a line once written: "We are orphans and children of orphans."

Tonight, John 14:18 is recalled: "I will not leave you orphans."

It's not that we're not alone, not that we're not orphans, but it's the appearance or non-appearance of a comma.

We might be alone. We might be orphans.
(Here insert comma.)
"I will not leave you, alone." "I will not leave you, orphans."

Like nearing bell buoy in vast openness of water, we are surrounded by Presence-Itself too profound for our ability to grasp.

No meaning. No grasping.

Presence.

Itself.

Reading opening pages of Pilgrim at Tinker Creek at shop. Two women come in. They buy the book. We'll have to order more for next week.

A solitary winter lantern
Casts a feeble shadow
Wind blows through
My flimsy hut and
Covers me with snow
I remember sitting
Cross legged on Wutai;
A makeshift door amid
The thousand year old ice.
- Han-shan Te-ch’ing (1546-1623)

Prison this morning conversing about theater and drama -- the acting of everyday, staging dialogue that emanates from...where? What playwright? Who is fashioning the scenes?

The shop is a warm hearth. Former students, the irregulars, some drop-ins, and wondering conversation about the water bug and the deflating frog. When you no longer call nature violent, how speak about the withining of one species and another? After intellectualizing about 'survival' or 'food chain' how do we come merely to see the inner exchange of essence and essence without hardening into objectification?

Never say or do anything except in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him. (--Colossians 3:17)

What is name but presence?

Irene steps in to say hello. Mark and friend from New York bring back Chinese food. FedEx loads ipod from shipping origin in China (for destination Camden) to the surprise of almost everyone.

In the prison Buddhist gathering, the notion of our own nature as sacred -- the practice everyday of someone asking you (menacingly or dismissively) "Who are you?" and the opportunity to meditate on the invitatory question.

On the board of the scrabble game in art room was the potential of 'pye.'

We are half-wild.

The ice holds.

What's the difference between 'being here' and 'listening'?

6 Again the LORD called, "Samuel!" And Samuel got up and went to Eli and said, "Here I am; you called me."
"My son," Eli said, "I did not call; go back and lie down."

7 Now Samuel did not yet know the LORD : The word of the LORD had not yet been revealed to him.

8 The LORD called Samuel a third time, and Samuel got up and went to Eli and said, "Here I am; you called me."
Then Eli realized that the LORD was calling the boy.

9 So Eli told Samuel, "Go and lie down, and if he calls you, say, 'Speak, LORD, for your servant is listening.' " So Samuel went and lay down in his place.

10 The LORD came and stood there, calling as at the other times, "Samuel! Samuel!"
Then Samuel said, "Speak, for your servant is listening."
(1 Samuel 3)

We do not yet understand what 'here' means. Nor what it means to be here. These days I am taken by the curious loss of elasticity in my energy. There's a sense of solitude, a hermit-like resting in the near and nigh.

Listening belongs to eyes. Trees on snowy hill. Their very stillness.


Some teachers spend their lives looking at what is listening.

# How does one be a buddha?
There is a simple way to become a buddha: When you refrain from unwholesome action, are not attached to birth and death, and are compassionate toward all sentient beings, respectful to seniors and kind to juniors, not excluding or desiring anything, with no designing thoughts or worries, you will be called a buddha. Do not seek anything else.
(- Zen Master Dogen, Moon in a Dewdrop, edited by Kazuaki Tanahashi from Everyday Mind, a Tricycle book edited by Jean Smith)

What else is there? Only dusk quietly lowering itself to ground. Silver silence, empty branch and twig, nestling snow.

Even in the midst of this lucid silence, one zen master held: You have to say something.

Is 'knowing the Lord' -- life itself listening?

What-is, in itself, listens with what-is surrounding itself.

Twilight.

Two days, two storms, two feet of snow. New Year's Eve and New Year's Day are filled with snow and snow.


Maine winter returns. Everything softened by snow. I climb ladder to roof with rake and hatchet, chopping ice dams, removing laden snow. Arms give up, hurting glad to be tired from useful pounding.

It’s about to snow;
Clouds fill the lake.
Tall buildings and terraces
Shimmer and disappear.
Now there are mountains;
Now there are not.
From the rocks flows water clear;
You can count the fish.
In the deep woods there aren’t any people;
Birds call back and forth.
- Su Shih (1036 – 1101)

It is easy to pretend to know the mind of God. Theologies are filled with data mined from that source.

It is harder to assent to the will of God. There's all that paradox and non-sequitor.

Blaise Pascal in his Pensees (#565) writes:

We understand nothing of the works of God, if we do not take as a principle that He has willed to blind some, and enlighten others.

All we can do is muddle along, doing this and that, expecting nothing and not disappointed by anything. Watching comings and goings from the vantage point of whoever we are wherever we are there.

Noting. Merely noting. This eighth day of Christmas.

Nietzsche wrote that : "'Faith' means not wanting to know what is true."

What does it mean to say: We are what is true!

It doesn't mean anything.

It is merely true.

Begin with mothering God. Mary did. So must we. Wisdom mothers. So we must.

Hagia Sophia
I. Dawn. The Hour of Lauds.

There is in all visible things an invisible fecundity, a
dimmed light, a meek namelessness, a hidden whole-
ness. This mysterious Unity and Integrity is Wisdom,
the Mother of all, Natura naturans. There is in all
things an inexhaustible sweetness and purity, a silence
that is a fount of action and joy. It rises up in word-
less gentleness and flows out to me from the unseen
roots of all created being, welcoming me tenderly,
saluting me with indescribable humility. This is at
once my own being, my own nature, and the Gift of
my Creator's Thought and Art within me, speaking
as Hagia Sophia, speaking as my sister, Wisdom.

I am awakened, I am born again at the voice of this
my Sister, sent to me from the depths of the divine
fecundity.
(--opening lines from poem, Hagia Sophia, by Thomas Merton, - Written in 1963)

"For him, to live was Christ. And to die, gain." (Thomas Merton, talk on John Cassian to novices, Prayer and the Active Life, at Gethsemane Abbey, early 1960s.)

The nothingness of the world, the emptiness of the world. Once seen, cannot but be looked at. And yet, it is nothing, zero. Merton is undaunted. It is why there are monasteries, why monastics keep looking, why this seeing-through is vocation and practice.

Clear, fresh Lu-yi sake
Warms on my little stove.
This evening sky may bring snow.
Come enjoy a cup with me.
- Po Chu-I (772-846)

We watch Ernesto Cardenal read his poem Psalm 5 on YouTube.

Psalm 5

Give ear to my words, O Lord
Hearken unto my moaning
Pay heed to my protest
For you are not a God friendly to dictators
neither are you a partisan of their politics
Nor are you influenced by their propaganda
Neither are you in league with the gangster

There is no sincerity in their speeches
nor in their press releases

They speak of peace in their speeches
while they increase their war production
They speak of peace at Peace Conferences
and secretly prepare for war
Their lying radios roar into the night
Their desks are strewn with criminal intentions and
sinister reports
But you will deliver me from their plans
They speak through the mouth of the submachine gun
Their flashing tongues are bayonets …

Punish them, O Lord,
thwart them in their policies
confuse their memorandums
obstruct their programs
at the hour of Alarm
you shall be with me
you shall be my refuge on the day of Bomb
To him who believes not in the lies of their commercial messages
nor in their publicity campaigns nor in their political campaigns
You will give your blessing
With love do you encompass him
As with armor-plated tanks.
(--Poem originally written in 1967 by Ernesto Cardenal, Nicaraguan poet, translated by Robert Marquez. It is a re-write of the Hebrew Scripture psalm.)

The 81-year old Roman Catholic priest, sculptor and revolutionary, once remonstrated by the visiting Pope for his work for justice in Nicaragua, carries on his work and art in a way Merton would smile at.

We need both smiles and silence as we enter this new year. When things look bleak both help.

And so we begin again. Last night into new day and new year we chanted the Heart Sutra followed by Salve Regina at midnight after silent sitting.

Wisdom and compassion are loving mothers of God.

We have come here to be alone.

We've come to look through.

We approach the altar.

Attending wisdom.

It's just a numerical progression. Going from 2007 to 2008. Passing from 11:59:59 to 12:00:00. A mere bagatelle.

Another year about to end
In my empty mountain abode;
Rivers and clouds,
Their trails indistinct;
Pines and cedars,
Their nature’s the same.
I arise from my nap
To find the taro roots done;
As the incense fades out,
I finish a scripture.
Who knows that real pleasure
Lies within stillness and silence?
- Wen-siang (1210-1280).

Of course old (auld) acquaintances shouldn't be forgotten. And, yes, it very well could be a happy new year. These things are beneficial musings.

We're with e.e.cummings in his six nonlectures. He said something like: Better worlds, I suggest, are born, not made - and begin with the birthdays of individuals. Let us pray, therefore, not for better worlds, but for individuals.

That's our prayer tonight.

In stillness and silence.

For each one.

Of us.

All.

Cook (Francis Dojun), writing about Dogen, says that "drinking tea and eating rice" means not killing the ordinary, not saying things are not good enough.

A soaring endlessly curving path,
Every few miles we have to rest.
I look around for my friends.
They’ve vanished in the wooded hills.
Rain floods the pine trees
And flows hushed among the rocks.
There are silent words deep in hill water,
A long whistle over the summits.
When I look at South Mountain
The sun floats white through the mist.
A blue marsh is luminous and clear.
Green trees are heavy shadows, drifting.
When I am tired of being closed in,
Suddenly a clearing and I’m at peace.
- Wang Wei (699-759

Let's not kill. Let's see things as they are and practice allowance.

Robert Creeley's: "Things come and things go -- then, let them," is a koan worth carrying with us.

Eight of us (nine, counting Mu-ge) did silent sitting in front room this evening.

We walked, chanted, bowed, rang bell, and left for middle room -- with reading, silent eating, then round-table shared observations.

Allowing one to be one, two two, and three to be three is a gracious act.

Life is a gracious act.

So are you.

I'd let religion go. I'd choose humanity. And nature. There's no explaining the ignorance with which we treat others. The political maneuvers. The lust for possession. The intrigue.

For all these years, my certain Zen:
Neither I nor the world exist.
The sutras neat within the box,
My staff hooked upon the wall,
I lie at peace in moonlight
Or, hearing water plashing on the rock,
Sit up. None can purchase pleasure such as this:
Spangled across the step-moss, a million coins!
- Ryushu Shutaku (1308–1388)

The intuition was good. Surely there is a God, it said, who knows, loves, and serves. So should we.

But the institutions of religion -- they tend to get a little too full of themselves. Much like the institutions of government. Even clubs which have to do the hard work of deciding who's in and who's to be kept out. There's an ossification that forms at the edges of institutions and structures. It happens to individuals too.

Plot Summary, Part One

The action of Murder in the Cathedral occurs in and around Canterbury Cathedral; Part One takes place on December 2,1170, the day that Archbishop Thomas Becket returned to England and twenty-seven days before his murder by four knights of King Henry II.

When the play begins, a Chorus comprised of the Women of Canterbury huddle outside the cathedral, certain that something is about to happen but unable to articulate any details: "Some presage of an act Which our eyes are compelled to witness, has forced our feet Towards the cathedral." They then describe their lives to the audience and these descriptions mark them as common people who fear any threat of change:"We try to keep our households in order," they explain, but "Some malady is coming upon us." Ultimately, they decide that"For us, the poor, there is no action,But only to wait and witness."
(--from Murder in the Cathedral Study Guide, by T. S. Eliot,
http://www.bookrags.com/studyguide-murdercathedral/sum.html)

In the end, Thomas Becket is murdered.

The individual is easy to betray. So are countries. Betrayal is easy. It requires a hard exterior.

A professional football team in New England wins 16 games without a loss this season. This news pleases many. Crowds cheer and celebrate.

It doesn't matter, really, who dominates and who is defeated in sports.

It doesn't matter which denomination or religion claims upper hand and victory in possessing truth at the one yard line.

I'd rather hear a poem to its end or listen to a good short story come to thought provoking period.

Humanity, yes, humanity over religion.

You take belief. I'll stay with the stumbling path of longing and inquiry. Answers seldom satisfy.

But questions -- they interest.

Eh? N'est-pas? Do you think?

Whenever Holy Innocents (or the wholly innocent) are harmed we are reminded how cruel power can be when wielded in sole or self interest.

A woman said: "We are in God; God is in everything; everything is in God."

Without religion -- the woman's words are true.

With religion -- accompanied by the current ethos of intolerance, extreme views of proprietary truth, torture, bullets, and war -- we are faced with the opposite of the woman's words.

In prison conversation today someone asked: If you had to say goodbye to humanity or to religion, which would you?

A genuine innocence does not know separation. Not knowing, innocence (without overlay of romantic idealism), is virginal.

Perennial original simple encounter.

Innocence is willing to see the itself.

As itself.

Benazir Bhutto's death by assassination in Pakistan saddens and infuriates.

In the shop today two other deaths are told. Two deaths by hanging. Young men.

Suicide and assassination are terrible facts.

They dropped like flakes, they dropped like stars,
Like petals from a rose,
When suddenly across the lune
A wind with fingers goes.

They perished in the seamless grass,--
No eye could find the place;
But God on his repealless list
Can summon every face.
(Poem by Emily Dickinson)

We cannot nor will we attempt to explain or intellectualize the pain and disappointment on the faces of those that knew the two different men and their separate deaths six days apart..

What will come of Pakistan and this country's marriage of convenience will have to wait to be seen.

We remain unfinished.

The open vulnerability of two oars in groaning oarlocks celebrating early solitude on Christmas morning.

From the distant shore as I rowed the Cape Dory 10 pulling boat into the outer route toward Curtis Island at sunrise yesterday, the sounding voice of someone invisible called, "Merry Christmas!" I placed right oar under left hand and raised arm twice arcing orange and yellow reflecting glove toward direction of unseen land-voice, then continued long strokes in rowboat. My smile at this greeting was deep joy. Swells tightened as the open bay caught growing breeze swirling from southwest.

Alone. But for that calling human voice, loons calling, ducks quacking, pipers chanting, other black and whites whistling, and crashing waves on rocky island coast -- it is an aloneness replete with enchanting company. A few minutes earlier, rowing empty channel past bookshop neighbors, the couple from San Diego in 3rd condo along harbor waved from bay window, her arm appearing from red bathrobe, from his a lifted coffee cup. Greeting the waterborne is a sacred act!

Midwinter, the eleventh month.
Wet snow falls unceasingly,
All the mountains have
Become the same color;
On the myriad paths
Human tracks are few.
My past journeys now
All seem like dreams,
The door to my grass hut
Is deeply covered.
All night long I burn small
Chunks of wood and
Silently read poems
By masters of the past.
- Ryokan (1758-1851)

Everything is subsequent to quietness and vulnerability of contemplation.

Certainly the solitude of a small rowboat in Camden harbor fitted well between dawn zazen in winter zendo at Ragged Mountain hermitage and mid-morning mass up to Belfast.

The day belongs to itself!

At dusk, walking up to grave sites alongside brook, lighting candle put inside hanging lantern on Cesco's grave, bowing to all beloved neighboring snow covered silences -- Sando, Koto, Tai, Mini. Back in meditation cabin, lighting candles for all the day's presences -- living and dead -- sitting a spell with their names and memories, bowing, tolling bell on porch before returning under view of mountain to house.

Bookending zazen in front room -- the quiet presence of everything!

Why are the nations in a ferment? Why do the people make their vain plans?
(--Psalm 2)

Peace is not the absence of war. Wars are the steady diet of insufficiency. Rather, peace is a more modest view.

To "view" is "to look at attentively." I view peace as the act of attentiveness. A saying we placed on the wall of the bookshop reads, "Our monastery is the attention we give to all of itself."

As monastics of no-other we long to practice viewing peace as the presence of itself in each and all of us, each moment, every thing, and the whole scope of appreciation of what is, for what is real and true in our midst.

Christmas now enters its own season. There's more to it than we've settled to believe. In the church calendar there are murdered men, murdered innocent children, writers, men and women who loved and lived, and the searching inquiry of foreigns looking to see for themselves the prospect, perspective, and palpable embodiment of peace. Yet, still, then and now:

The murderers are at work.

They are stoning Stephen,
They are casting him forth from every city in the world.
Under the Welcome sign,
Under the Rotary emblem,
On the highway in the suburbs,
His body lies under the hurling stones.
He was full of faith and power.
He did great wonders among the people.
They could not stand against his wisdom.
They could not bear that spirit with which he spoke.
He cried out in the name
Of the tabernacle of witness in the wilderness.
They were cut to the heart.
They gnashed against him with their teeth.
They cried out with a loud voice.
They stopped their ears.
They ran on him with one accord.
They cast him out of the city and stoned him,
The witnesses laid down their clothes
At the feet of the man whose name was your name-
You.
(--from poem THOU SHALT NOT KILL, (A Memorial For Dylan Thomas), by Kenneth Rexroth)

And me.

We are now ready for peace. This is both an intention and a daily practice. No more throwing at each other. Put down the stones. Build a cairn. It is a trail we set foot on. Build a day marker at the edge of sea. Be that which we look to and through as we learn the viewing of peace. There is much sadness and suffering in the season. Do not be afraid to see it through.

View yourself as the other person -- thus and then, there is no other.

Peace is viewing the whole in and through each and every being before you.

It is Stephen's Day.

It is your day

Take the trail.

Peace is an open vulnerability.

Row well through it!

Now.

Better to see the face than hear the name.
(--Zen saying)

Single flame in front window aside Madonna and Child icon.

Silent sitting in empty space. Nothing but morning and candle and what is right here.

Salt and Water
The degree of love we manifest determines the degree of spaciousness and freedom we can bring to life's events. Imagine taking a very small glass or water and putting into it a teaspoon of salt. Because of the small size of the container, the teaspoon of salt is going to have a big effect on the water. However, if you approach a much larger body of water, such as a lake, and put into it the same teaspoonful of salt, it will not have the same intensity of impact, because of the vastness and openness of the vessel receiving it. Even when the salt remains the same, the spaciousness of the vessel receiving it changes everything. We spend a lot of our lives looking for a feeling of safety or protection -- we try to alter the amount of salt that comes our way. Ironically, the salt is the very thing that we cannot do anything about, as life changes and offers us repeated ups and downs. Our true work is to create a container so immense that any amount of salt, even a truckload, can come into it without affecting our capacity to receive it.
( - Sharon Salzberg, Lovingkindness, from Everyday Mind, a Tricycle book edited by Jean Smith)

This Christmas morning -- stillness.

I am with everyone -- alone.

As I am -- with everyone, here or gone, now or gone beyond -- in this onlyness.

At Zen centers they say there is a Way to be practiced
And a religious truth to be realized.
Tell me, what religious truth is realized,
What way is practiced?
In your present functioning, what do you lack?
What would you fix?
Younger newcomers, not understanding this,
Immediately believe these mesmerists and
Let them talk about things that tie people up.
- Linji (d. 867)

When the Christ-Reality is seen in this world, all will be untied and free to come and go, free to be what always they have been and are now.

What is that? What is this?

Christ-Reality, seen, is Son or Daughter, each and every being, and thing, of What-Is-Nearest.

No one has ever seen God;
it is the only Son, who is nearest to the Father’s heart,
who has made him known.
(--John 1:18)

This is my Christmas prayer and practice: seeing each face, sensing each presence, gratefully attending what is nearest.

This is the beginning. And in the beginning is the Word: reality, life, energy of wholeness.

Receiving this.

Communion.

Facing what is.

Here.

...

(Merry Christmas, friends!)

Full moon. On ground. White snow.

The gift is each being itself.

'...this by the tender mercy of our God
who from on high will bring the rising Sun to visit us,
to give light to those who live
in darkness and the shadow of death
and to guide our feet
into the way of peace.’
(--from Luke 1:67 - 79)

It is still possible to end war. By dawn, war will be over.

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

Go to bed. Sleep. Let night do what it must do tonight.

By morning, the leap will have been taken.

We will awaken.

With first light.

To begin again.

The phrase spoken at end by celebrant was "Be God with us." Whichever word gets the emphasis changes and decides the meaning.

Where people of today dwell,
I do not dwell.
What people of today do,
I do not do.
If you clearly understand what this really means,
You must be able to enter a pit of fire with
Your whole body.
- Huanglong

The end of Advent comes. Monday appears. A hiatus arrives. It is the transition of 'this' into the body and blood, soul and divinity of a being heretofore unrecognized and unimagined.

Which being? (How will it arrive this time with us? Sentient? Human? Animal? Material? Mineral? Elemental? Ontological? Cosmological?) There's the koan. There's the mystery of Christmas wrapped in no ribbon with no name card affixed.

There will be no more night: they will not need sunlight or lamp-light, because the Lord God himself will shine upon them. (--Apocalypse 22:5)

It's the part of the Christian tradition that befuddles Christians. Instead of bowing down in complete reverence to the revealing truth that God is with us in ways too obvious and ordinary for us to attend -- that we are to be with God with us -- there is instead a race to define, exclude, demand formula, look past one another, attempt to defeat individuals and peoples who are (themselves) the mystery embodied. Finally, there is the absurd effort on the part of some to create a heaven and a theology that ignorantly bars the very God they so tout and crave.

Call It Quits

If you're not a movie mogul, rock star, or President
if you're not a CEO sitting on a billion in the bank,
no one will answer your e-mails, phone calls or letters.
You'll be helpless, hopeless, too old, too young,
in too much pain, the wrong color, some unacceptable
sex, a non-believer in some religion people kill for.
You could be struggling to see through everyone's
skin to their slick, writhing guts, including your own.
Or, you could call it quits, and slip into the unknown,
inexhaustible, frothing teeth of the sea that turns us
all to brine, sweet salt of the universe.
(--Poem by Freya Manfred, from Swimming With A Hundred Year Old Snapping Turtle. Red Dragonfly Press, 2008.)

A hiatus arrives. Look closely. Yes, the 24th brings hiatus.

hi·a·tus Pronunciation[hahy-ey-tuhs]
–noun, plural -tus·es, -tus.
1. a break or interruption in the continuity of a work, series, action, etc.
2. a missing part; gap or lacuna: Scholars attempted to account for the hiatus in the medieval manuscript.
3. any gap or opening.
4. Grammar, Prosody. the coming together, with or without break or slight pause, and without contraction, of two vowels in successive words or syllables, as in see easily.
5. Anatomy. a natural fissure, cleft, or foramen in a bone or other structure.
(--from Dictionary.com)

It's often like that, an arrival, unexpected and discontinuous, the missing part itself showing up, all surprising and an inadvertent complete necessity.

Perhaps we think, "Ah, a foramen!" ('Foramen' means 'great hole' --or is it 'whole' -- 'a natural opening.' It would change the meaning of exclamation following any prayer.)

Whether great hole or great whole -- there it is.

All of itself.

Being God with us