Canada is close and magnificant neighbor. It makes us think big.


We'd like a million dollars. We'd settle for 975,000. We'd buy a 16 acre farm in Canada with many outbuildings, a 7 bedroom, 4 bathroom house. We'd fashion a meditation cabin, a chapel, a bookshop/bakery, guest quarters, animal barn, organic acres for food, and choose the option of right of way down to beach at St Croix River opening through Passamaquoddy Bay into Bay of Fundy.

Alright -- the property only costs 549,000. But we thought it would be nice to have a buffer against additional costs for upkeep and improvements in order to bring about a marvelous center for retreat and lay monastic practice between traditions of Catholic/Anglican Christianity and Mahayanan/Theravadan Buddhism.

We'll start our capital campaign on Valentine's Day. We'd like to make an offer on the place by St. Patrick's Day and move in on the final day of winter so as to wake up the first day of spring.

Donors are encouraged. Those whose portfolios are large and whose hearts are generous will receive in return whipped cream on their ice cream. We'd prefer to have no mortgage. You can own it for us if you like.
Everyone who pauses at this prospect with a good thought is exceedingly welcome to visit and pray, sit and meditate, and eat good food sprinkled with hope, joy, compassion and loving kindness.

By listening to the sound of music and its fading, the wise understand the rise and fall of all things. By watching, the wise know the meaning of things even before they appear and take shape.
- Ko Hung 4th century

A million dollars. Maybe less. OK, a lot less. Maybe even a smile allowing that we still dream dreams of places where in parallel worlds a life such as ours is lived out wondering what resides on the other side of subtle cloaking dimension.

Land Love

We stood here in the coupledom of us.
I showed her this — a pool with leaping trout,
Split-second saints drawn in a rippled nimbus.

We heard the night-boys in the fir trees shout.
Dusk was an insect-hovered dark water,
The calling of lost children, stars coming out.

With all the feelings of a widower
Who does not live there now, I dream my place.
I go by the soft paths, alone with her.

Dusk is a listening, a whispered grace
Voiced on a bank, a time that is all ears
For the snapped twig, the strange wind on your face.

She waits at the door of the hemisphere
In her harvest dress, in the remote
Local August that is everywhere and here.

What rustles in the leaves, if it is not
What I asked for, an opening of doors
To a half-heard religious anecdote?

Monogamous swans on the darkened mirrors
Picture the private grace of man and wife
In its white poise, its sleepy portraitures.

Night is its Dog Star, its eyelet of grief
A high, lit echo of the starry sheaves.
A puff of hedge-dust loosens in the leaves.
Such love that lingers on the fields of life!
(--Poem by Douglas Dunn, Faber, 1985)

At turn in stairs there's a statue settled into a niche. A woman. Is it Mary? Or Kuan Yin? Whoever she is, she knows our hearts are filled with humor and openness to possibility. Do people want to come here to rest a while? Does silence wish minds to penetrate? Will the sweet beauty of nature draw into our tired minds reminders of true home?

It might not matter where one lives, or even whether there is room for others to visit and refresh. This dream of ours has been with us for a long time. Every once in a while we take it out, dust it off, and dance with it in the open air.

One of the small joys in life is the possibility of surprise.

The unexpected kindness.
Gift without explanation.

A grace quietly accepted.

Even before it appears.

Then, naturally, there's the question: Who are you not?

The question corresponds with its sister question: Where is God not?

The morning drive leaving Fort Kent, moving through northern Maine's rooftop laden with deep, deep snow. Mailboxes are covered, snow tiptoes up to first floor windows, heavy white burden buckles old barns, roadways are luge runs with soft embankments should the icy permafrost toss you askew. Then across to Caribou, down to Presque Isle -- the lovely beauty of winter! More snow tomorrow.

A saint is not ashamed of being despised, but saddened to see good counsel spurned. That life be brief does not depress him but avoidable suffering distresses him. He keeps his mind free of vain endeavors and embraces wisdom. By becoming one with the Great Unity the saint avoids the whirlpool of the mundane vanities.
- Wen-tzu

The activities might swirl about, even through, the saint -- but, I suppose, she is not drawn down by whirlpool and lost in dark depths. Perhaps preventive escape is not so much the issue as is sane survival. A friend used to speak about insulating himself against the world of temptations and dark forces. "Let these pass," Obi-Wan Kenobi said to the Imperial Guards, referring to his small coterie of fellow travelers passing through dangerous terrain, "they mean no harm." They were let pass. All rules of search and impede suspended.

Like walking across bridge between Fort Kent, Maine and Clair, New Brunswick -- at the international boundary over frozen river sided by floes passing under -- stand in two countries at once -- the freezing earth, air, and water giving not a thought to matters of government, nation, or possession of air space.

We're not, I concede, who we think we are. But there's more to it.

Someone I cared for

Someone I cared for
put it to me: Who
do you think you are?

I went down the list
of all the many
possibilities

carefully — did it
twice — but couldn't find
a plausible one.

That was when I knew
for the first time who
in fact I wasn't.
(Poem: "Someone I cared for" by Cid Corman, from And The Word. Coffee House Press, 1987.)

Once, I stood under the cliff at edge of beach in Downeast Maine. Everything leaned out in solid silence as tide rolled rocks behind us at shoreline. Everything we'd seen and everyone we'd spoken with that day accompanied us to that moment at that spot in a consciousness excluding nothing from itself. We see things for each other. We hear things for one another. We quietly contemplate nature -- elemental, animal, human, and divine -- and these varying forms and emptinesses allow themselves to open and flower before and within us.

So, we ask one another: Who do you think you are? And we pause for a bit and reflect. We consider the possible implications and parameters of any response. We then carry on to the next in our lives -- the next instant, next minute, and next hour arising with us.

We dwell in the swirl of everything happening at the same time.

In everything there is a calm center, a resting place in the chaos, a sanctuary where resides the sacred emptiness assenting our particular presence.

If we go there, we are not only not alone, we are more profoundly involved, and more paradoxically informed. There, in the center of the swirling motion that is the evidenced world, we are alone -- but alone with the Alone. This "Alone" is all there is, nothing missing, everything within everything.

Allow yourself the visit.

Touch any one thing, feel every thing.

Forget what we've thought God.

Enter God.

Where God is.

Pass well!

Note: The bookshop/bakery is closed Monday (11th), and Tuesday(12th).
We will re-open Wednesday 13 Feb.
................

Consciousness without thought, says Eckhart Tolle, is alert presence that is still and awake. It is, he says, Being before it becomes beings.

Without going outdoors
The Sage knows all things under heaven.
Without looking through the window
He sees the Way of Heaven.
The more one ventures forth
The less one knows.
- Tao te Ching

Barack Obama wins Maine caucus. At practice tonight a man who'd attended Obama's rally in Bangor yesterday said the candidate was real and electric, inspiring hope. It was good to hear his experience.

Beginningness
Most people think of enlightenment as a kind of magical attainment, a state of being close to perfection. At this level, one can perform amazing feats, see past and future lives of others, and tune in to the inner workings of the universe. This may be possible for a number of special beings, but for most of us enlightenment is much more in line with what Suzuki Roshi describes. It means having a quality of "beginningness," a fresh, simple, unsophisticated view of things. To have "beginner's mind" in how we approach things is a major teaching. In many ways, the process of enlightenment is clearing away the thoughts, beliefs, and ideas that cloud our ability to see things as they really are in their pristine form.
(- David A. Cooper, Silence, Simplicity and Solitude, from Everyday Mind, edited by Jean Smith, a Tricycle book)

We need new beginning. We've reached a cul-de-sac. Those at the barricades do not want heads to turn. We need to turn around. Head out. Out of head. Don't think. Investigate.

All That Is Glorious Around Us
(title of an exhibit on The Hudson River School)

is not, for me, these grand vistas, sublime peaks, mist-filled
overlooks, towering clouds, but doing errands on a day
of driving rain, staying dry inside the silver skin of the car,
160,000 miles, still running just fine. Or later,
sitting in a café warmed by the steam
from white chicken chili, two cups of dark coffee,
watching the red and gold leaves race down the street,
confetti from autumn's bright parade. And I think
of how my mother struggles to breathe, how few good days
she has now, how we never think about the glories
of breath, oxygen cascading down our throats to the lungs,
simple as the journey of water over a rock. It is the nature
of stone / to be satisfied / writes Mary Oliver, It is the nature
of water / to want to be somewhere else, rushing down
a rocky tor or high escarpment, the panoramic landscape
boundless behind it. But everything glorious is around
us already: black and blue graffiti shining in the rain's
bright glaze, the small rainbows of oil on the pavement,
where the last car to park has left its mark on the glistening
street, this radiant world.
(Poem: "All That Is Glorious Around Us" by Barbara Crooker from Radiance. Word Press, 2005.)

This observation comforts as it instructs: "everything glorious is around / us already". Around table this evening we read Henri Nouwen on Lent. He spoke of addictive behavior keeping us in a distant country.

It is time to start home.

Winter, tired, yawns.

Spring, waking, yawns.

They see-saw in our consciousness and on the ground.

We've less than half wood (or hay) on this past Candlemas day.

Toboggan championships take place over at snowbowl. Saskia and Annie go snowshoeing learning about animal tracks along the St George river. I submit application to adopt rescue dog. It's time.

Evening wind, morning frost:
These things make solitude beautiful.
- Yun Shouping (1633-1690)

Snow over everything last night. Tomorrow again. Four to eight inches at a clip.

Moses was looking after the flock of Jethro, his father-in-law priest of Midian.
He led his flock to the far side of the wilderness and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. There the angel of the Lord appeared to him in the shape of a flame of fire, coming from the middle of a bush.
(--Exodus 3:1)

The thought occurs: What if the contemporary Bush is, as he and others claim, the doer/decider of God's will in the world. Such an instrumental possibility that what Mr. Bush has been doing/deciding in the world might be the will of God is a compelling argument to allow God go out of office with spokesman.

Roadside blasts kill 5 U.S. soldiers in Iraq
by Michael Holden, Sat. Feb 9, 9:37 AM ET

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Five American soldiers were killed in roadside bombings in Iraq on Friday, the U.S. military said on Saturday, while Iraqi police detained 22 suspects in raids against Shi'ite militiamen.

The Population Clock for 9Feb08 suggests there are 303,492, 496 folks in the United States and 6,649,483,641 in the world. (http://www.census.gov/)

We're lucky to have a man at the helm with such an advisor as God.


The cat at base of birdfeeder waits for misguidance and distraction to bring careless attraction across his path. If such occurs, he will swipe and slash, feathering snow with stunned fallen bird.

We call cat in when he approaches stakeout. Would we were able to recall those in power who perform their mindless destruction. Whether you argue that killing is part of animal or human nature -- or perhaps hold that the good of the one overarches the good of the many -- there is something unnerving and repulsive about the way humans kill and destroy with mere smirking explanation as rationale.

Cats are cats. But human beings are (some think) what God longs to be. With surrogate carriers such as the depleting president, it's no wonder why contraception and abortion continue as reasonable options. Who would want such a God as one that chooses such a surrogate? Who will be the one to bear resemblance to holiness incarnate?

It's a rarified argument for unborning. But then...perhaps our task is more forgiving. The game is afoot! (Cat bangs at barn screen door wanting in from wanderings.)

Moses, we hear, freed his people from enslaving ignorance.

Who will remember how that is done?

How do we cross today's flooding sea of enslaving ignorance?

In prison Buddhist Group we laugh with Tony as he points out his mind when he didn't get French fries on his tray yesterday.

We laugh because we know that mind. His flash of anger was (of course) righteous, and (of course) the fault of some other person, and (of course) something with the potential to keep him stewing for hours. But this morning he gifts us with his French fry mind near-dharma talk, and we laugh at our mind's incarceration.

Today (or on the 15th) is celebrated Nirvana Day.

Parinirvana

This is a Mahayana Buddhist festival that marks the death of the Buddha. It is also known as Nirvana Day.

Buddhists celebrate the death of the Buddha, because they believe that having attained Enlightenment he achieved freedom from physical existence and its sufferings.

(Women outside Buddhist Temple in Nepal)

The Buddha's death came when he was eighty years old, and had spent forty years teaching after his Enlightenment. He died in a state of meditation, and attained nirvana, a release from the cycle of death and rebirth.

The Paranibbana Sutta describes the Buddha's last days, and passages from it are often read on Parinirvana Day.

Buddhists celebrate Parinirvana Day by meditating or by going to Buddhist temples or monasteries. As with other Buddhist festivals, celebrations vary throughout the world.

In monasteries Parinirvana Day is treated as a social occasion. Food is prepared and some people bring presents such as money, household goods or clothes.

The day is used as an opportunity to reflect on the fact of one's own future death, and on friends or relations who have recently passed away. The idea that all things are transient is central to Buddhist teaching. Loss and impermanence are things to be accepted rather than causes of grief.

Meditations are carried out for the newly deceased to give them help and support wherever they might be now. (http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/buddhism/holydays/parinirvana.shtml)

News of a suicide within larger prison community. Prayers follow. Here's one. And here's one.

There's always need of near-dharma and near-teisho stories.

We're glad the Buddha realized cessation of suffering.

We have a chance to transcend French-fry-mind.

We have a chance to laugh.

How often have you heard: "You are something else!" It is a good day when I can say -- "I am nothing." It's because I am nothing else. In fact, there is nothing else.

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)

The awaiting man, the flying crane, the solid mountain -- these are not three things.

If we see things the way they are, we are not other than the way we are.

I Close My Eyes

I close my eyes like a good little boy at night in bed,
as I was told to do by my mother when she lived,
and before bed I brush my teeth and slip on my pajamas,
as I was told, and look forward to tomorrow.

I do all things required of me to make me a citizen of sterling worth.
I keep a job and come home each evening for dinner. I arrive at the
same time on the same train to give my family a sense of order.

I obey traffic signals. I am cordial to strangers, I answer my
mail promptly. I keep a balanced checking account. Why can't I
live forever?
Poem: "I Close My Eyes" by David Ignatow from Against the Evidence: Selected Poems 1934-1994. Wesleyan University Press, 1994.

Any one word is enough to introduce extraneous meaning into an already eloquent stillness of one's own presentation. Be careful about the impulse to speak. The whole world came about because of a few words.

There is much to listen to.

Whatever you do.

Say not.

A word.

If you do say anything, nothing will ever be the same.

We must allow nothingness the distinctive change of its own way.

This lent I will lose wait. No waiting. See the revelation here as it is now.

We are the earth. And, we are the space above as well as that surrounding this small planet. We are breath and we are body. It is Ash Wednesday. Ash on forehead -- wants us to remember what we are, wants us to remember we are earth, space, breath, body and all the rest of it.

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)

Today we remember what we dimly intuit: nothing is excluded from life -- not even death.


This lent I will lose wait and move with movement itself.

The immediacy and diversity of Christ's revealing mind is upon us.

It is Easter morning, Christmas evening, Tibetan and Chinese new year, followed by Buddha's Nirvana day -- all rolled into one.

Time says: "Wait a while; see what comes."

I'm not waiting.

The whole universe reveals itself.

A vote for him. A vote for her. A vote for someone else.

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)

No more votes.

Election is not the importance we think it is.

Love is.

Our.

Only.

Way.

Play.

The drama of it.

Acting, not making. That's what Alan Watts says the difference is between two understandings of God. God is builder king in west. God is acting self in east. Boss versus theater troupe.

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)

Rather, stay luded.

Play.

Divinely recognize your true self beyond stage presence.

Put nothing between you and who you really are.

Want anything? Want nothing?

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)

The football game ends the way they all do: one team wins, one loses. Only the names change.

Seek the Lord,
all you, the humble of the earth,
who obey his commands.
Seek integrity,
seek humility:
you may perhaps find shelter
on the day of the anger of the Lord.

In your midst I will leave
a humble and lowly people,
and those who are left in Israel will seek refuge in the name of the Lord.
They will do no wrong,
will tell no lies;
and the perjured tongue will no longer
be found in their mouths.
But they will be able to graze and rest
with no one to disturb them.
(--Zephaniah 2:3 - 3:13)

February comes, and January falls of itself.

At practice tonight we read Chuang Tzu by way of Thomas Merton. We speak of wu-wei, non-doing.

The essential message of Taoism is that life constitutes an organic, interconnected whole which undergoes constant transformation.

This unceasing flow of change manifests itself as a natural order governed by unalterable, yet perceivable laws. Paradoxically, it is the constancy of these governing principles (like the rising and setting of the sun and moon and the changing of the seasons) that allows people to recognize and utilize them in their own process of transformation. Gaining an awareness of life's essential unity and learning to cooperate with its natural flow and order enables people to attain a state of being that is both fully free and independent and at the same time fully connected to the life flow of the Universe - being at one with the Tao. From the Taoist viewpoint this represents the ultimate stage of human existence.

The writings of the legendary Taoist sages, Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu, furnish us with specific principles as a guide to attaining this state of oneness. Through understanding these principles and applying them to daily living we may consciously become a part of life's flow.

A key principle in realizing our oneness with the Tao is that of wu-wei, or "non-doing." Wu-wei refers to behavior that arises from a sense of oneself as connected to others and to one's environment. It is not motivated by a sense of separateness. It is action that is spontaneous and effortless.
(--from Taoism - The Wu-Wei Principle, Part 4, by Ted Kardash
http://www.jadedragon.com/archives/june98/tao.html)

Rowed out and around R2 in the bay outside Camden harbor. Clangers sounding monastic hours in deep reclusive sacred solitude. The joyousness of small boat emptying mind in swell and tide!Being hermit in the open is grace enough!

Nothing else needed.

Naught wanted.

Visiting hospital. Man says he missed by a few hours having his foot amputated. Lucky. At nurses station a half dozen folks charting.

In Buddhism there are numerous paths of spiritual training. Each has its unique goal, purpose, and benefits for oneself and others. But in order to be able to benefit truly, it is very important to understand the principal purpose underlying these practices. If we take the wrong turn at a crossroads, every step we make will take us further from our destination. In the same way, if we fail to realize the nature of our spiritual goal and what our aim should be, our practice will not be beneficial, or at least not nearly as helpful as it could otherwise be. The main focus of all of our training in Dharma is to benefit our minds.... If we do not improve our minds, then regardless of how many understandings we have about the ten stages, the five paths, ceremonies, philosophies, and so forth, they'll all become objects that we never apply to ourselves. It can be very simple, like when we are facing the right direction--every step will bring us closer to our destination.
(- Tulku Thondup, in Enlightened Journey)
from Everyday Mind, edited by Jean Smith, a Tricycle book

I'd rather look within and see nothing than look out into the world and see the nothing that comes with a side of nothing. In both cases, there is nothing to behold.

Listening to the sound of bell at beginning and end.

No need to remember, everything is right there at the sounding of the bell.

We enter and sit, stand and leave, without ever moving.

A still, clear, learning without anything added -- like, understanding.

I've been thinking about 9/11/2001 today 2/01/2008.

Just that. Nothing else.

What is this wonder-filled universe?
What constitutes seed?
Who centers the universal wheel?
What is this life beyond form pervading forms?
How may we enter it fully,
Above space and time,
Names and descriptions?
Let my doubts be cleared.
- Vigyan Bhairava (~4000 years ago)

A mistake was made that September morning.

I'm trying to remember what it was I forgot.

I think it had to do with loving the odd God making fire too hot to bear.

Or the men who felt they knew the name of God.

The mistake was trying to avenge and retaliate.

Yes, that's it. There was a chance to teach God something needed by God.

Just because we failed and forgot what to teach, it doesn't mean God cannot learn.

Fire doesn't burn fire. Water doesn't wash water.

In another moment
He had learned a different way of dying
Called Here and Now, called There and Where and Nowhere.
(--from poem Staying Found, by David Wagoner)

With prayer wheel in hand, someone prays. Someone else is touched by prayer.

On beach of myriad small stones, a stolid stone seal swirls through rising water.

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)

It is our grace to see swimming stones along end of January on Jasper Beach. A similar grace to that of hearing words of men in prison speak depth of life bursting through the surface.

Sit up.

Take notice.

The prison of popular ignorance is crowded. If there be freedom, release the mind.

Each stone calls out to passing edge of tide -- listen to receding call.

We are poor passing facts,
warned by that to give
each figure in the photograph
his living name.
(--from poem Epilogue, by Robert Lowell)

For now let's say -- brother, sister, friend, father, mother, you and you and you.

A million times each one.

God means movement, not explanation. (--Elie Wiesel)

Seeing pleasure such as this.

Move with care.

The dory rower has come down from wind vane. He's tired. He's taking a few weeks off.

Those who awaken never rest in one place.
Like swans, they rise and leave the lake.
On the air they rise and fly an invisible course.
Their food is knowledge.
They live on emptiness.
They have seen how to break free.
Who can follow them?
- Buddha in the Dhammapada

Watchng Kieslowski's Red. "Be," the retired judge tells the young woman. She wants to know what else he knows. "Who are you?" she asks.

Right. Who are we? And what are we doing in one another's life?

Rest well.

Below Machiasport, Bucks Harbor, the view from FAA parking atop hill begins with enormous radar ball above Downeast Correctional Facility where once an Air Force installation was housed. We have our first Meetingbrook Conversation at the prison there.

This old monk meditates and
Rests in the empty mountains
In loneliness and stillness
Through the days and nights.
When I leave the pure cliffs,
I am distracted by callers
The world of people is first
And always the world of people.
- Seigan Soi (1588-1661)

We take gift of the view. It's not theirs to see. They know there's one there. They encourage us to go see it. It's an odd clarity that sees through others.

People are always people. We have our ways about us.

Good to see faces of friends again. The mere art and practice of conversation.

About enthusiasm, ego, waving energy, ourselves. With the help of Eckhart Tolle.

These days of odd disorder retrieving some clarity.

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?