Here is what I know. This is the truth. Between one thing and another is wisdom in the open.

We need saints.

Can you think of a word that describes a person who devoted much of her life to being with people many of us cross the street to avoid? Who for half a century did her best to make sure they didn’t go hungry or freeze on winter nights? Who went to Mass every day until her legs couldn’t take her that far, at which point Communion was brought to her? Who prayed every day for friend and enemy alike and whose prayers, some are convinced, had miraculous results? Who went to confession every week? Who was devoted to the rosary? Who wore hand-me-down clothes and lived in cold-water flats? Whose main goal in life was to follow Christ and to see him in the people around her?

A saint.

Can you think of a word that describes a person who refused to pay taxes, didn’t salute the flag, never voted, went to prison every now and then for protests against war and social injustice? Who spoke in a plain and often rude way about our way of life? Who complained that the Church wasn’t paying enough attention to its own teaching and compared some of its bishops to sharks?

A troublemaker.

Dorothy Day, saint and troublemaker.
(--from Dorothy Day — A Saint for Our Age? By Jim Forest; Presented at the Dorothy Day Centenary Conference, Marquette University, October 10, 1997.)

This world is not what it seems to be.

We need troublemakers.

When body and soul are rid of the dust of this world of dreams our understanding is awakened and Truth perceived.
(- Wall poem at North Peak Temple)

Let's pray for saints and troublemakers.

Dream truth.

Awaken dreams.

Boards are drilled, bolts set, then unset, stain brushed on boards stood upright against barn overnight. In the morning we'll fit the double gate, pick up a couple of bolt-throughs for sag prevention wire, finally, mount at bottom of drive.

Something about a gate. Even without livestock, everyone needs a farm gate.

Clouds bury the mountains behind the house,
Grass blocks the road to the gate.
Tattered books on the shelf,
A closed door to the outside world.
- Li Yu (10th century)

The world seems brighter tonight. A man who inspires steps closer to nomination for presidency. The old and disheveled despair will end -- if we are lucky. Luck is vital. It is precipice time.

Marching

At dawn I heard among bird calls
the billions of marching feet in the churn
and squeak of gravel, even tiny feet
still wet from the mother's amniotic fluid,
and very old halting feet, the feet
of the very light and very heavy, all marching
but not together, criss-crossing at every angle
with sincere attempts not to touch, not to bump
into each other, walking in the doors of houses
and out the back door forty years later, finally
knowing that time collapses on a single
plateau where they were all their lives,
knowing that time stops when the heart stops
as they walk off the earth into the night air.
--Poem, "Marching," from Jim Harrison's "Saving Daylight" (2006)

Harrison, in introductory notes to After Ikkyu (1996), a collection of Zen-inspired poetry, wrote: "I'm a poet and we tend to err on the side that life is more than it appears rather than less."

We're going to fall. That's where precipice leads. But it is unknown yet whether we will fall into our true nature or away from decency far from any recognizable facsimile of kindness or compassion. I vote for true nature.

There is so much more than many want us to see.

Our gate will remind us.

To pass through, you have to open.

Moon just shy of full. Jon Lester throws a no-hitter for Boston against Kansas City. No one is quite sure why the dollar has been allowed to de-value, nor why no one in government wants the troops in Iraq either to win or to come home.

The perfect person has many different aspects, but at heart he changes not. To understand the world he assumes its appearances, but his heart remains centered on the One. Within he is stable; outwardly he bends and straightens like a bow.
- Wen-tzu

Someone puts out a film taking on Christianity, the 9-11 official story, and the banking coup-d'etat in America and the world. Luckily they left Italian pizza alone.

Mother Night

When you wake at three AM you don't think
of your age or sex and rarely your name
or the plot of your life which has never
broken itself down into logical pieces.
At three AM you have the gift of incomprehension
wherein the galaxies make more sense
than your job or the government. Jesus at the well
with Mary Magdalene is much more vivid
than your car. You can clearly see the bear
climb to heaven on a golden rope in the children's
story no one ever wrote. Your childhood horse
named June still stomps the ground for an apple.
What is morning and what if it doesn't arrive?
One morning Mother dropped an egg and asked
me if God was the same species as we are?
Smear of light at five AM. Sound of Webber's
sheep flock and sandhill cranes across the road,
burble of irrigation ditch beneath my window.
She said, "Only lunatics save newspapers
and magazines," fried me two eggs, then said,
"If you want to understand mortality look at birds."
Blue moon, two full moons this month,
which I conclude are two full moons. In what
direction do the dead fly off the earth? Rising sun. A thousand blackbirds pronounce day.
(Poem: "Mother Night" by Jim Harrison from Saving Daylight. Copper Canyon Press, 2007.)

At 6AM bird flew into kitchen window. It lay stunned on grass. I watched it from second floor window, wishing it well, sending strength. Then I worried. Had the cat gone out earlier with the dog. I watched the stretch of grass. No cat. Good.

The bird, a rosy breasted grosbeak, rolled from it's side, still dazed. From under the bush came the cat. In a second both were gone. I had my screen out and ready to toss it -- but it happened so fast. When I got downstairs and out into yesterday's cut grass, only green clippings on my wet feet.

Religion is not, at the outset, a refuge of grace and mercy for the despondent and desperate, an enchanted stream for crushed spirits, but a raging, clamorous torrent of man's consciousness, with all its crises, pangs, and torments.
(- Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, 1903-1993)

At end of day we build one of two gates for end of driveway.

The impulse is to protect life.

Sometimes, more often than we'd like to think, life says: No, thank you!

In loft of cabin warmed by birch in stove -- the silence of wood.

The bait is the means to get the fish where you want it; catch the fish, and you discard the bait. Words are the means to get the idea where you want it; catch on to the idea, and you forget about the words.
- Zhuangzi

Sky, earth, and water. This trinity sets alongside mythic metaphors acculturated through history by theology.

But then, isn't all of matter the making of theology?

I bow to the threeness. Holy, and holy, and holy is communion of each and each in all.


Who can say for certain what is true?

If you try, please, retain some humility.

One final patch of snow melts. They piled a 20 foot high mound about 60 feet round weeks ago. Now, a few inches high and three feet across it melts where the tube run once was at the Snow Bowl.

Every plant and tree knows spring will soon be gone
A hundred pinks and purples
Compete with their bouquets
Willow fuzz and elm pods lack such clever means
They only know how to fill the sky with snow.
- Han Yu (768-824)

The walking man with cancer sat in shop this evening talking about how he cannot tolerate the thought of a bladder bag and will nix the idea of surgery.

We're all walking death through life.

We just don't understand what either of them is exactly.

So, we walk on.

Happy for the practice.

There is no teacher. Only learners; only the teaching.

Mind to Mind

Literature gives us the great gift of the present moment. As we read we enter the author's mind and follow it like a train on its tracks... she is taking us far out or far in and we're there! --no place else. Mind to mind...

But you ask, isn't the present moment just this: the sun coming in through the window, me leaning on a wooden desk, my eyes darting along the page, my legs crossed--not trucking along, my mind deep in the author's story?

Yes, that also is the present moment, but usually if I'm sitting there without reading, I am a divided person. Half of me is there, the other half is out the window, down the block shopping for wild rice, thinking about supper or how mad I am at a friend. But when I'm reading and I love what I'm reading, I'm totally connected, whole. Me and Shakespeare, me and Milton--no time or space between us. We are one--not two, not split. Then with that oneness, full of concentration and presence, I look up and can really see and experience through my whole body the light coming in through the glass pane and how it plays on the desktop where my book is, and I can feel my legs crossed underneath.
(--Natalie Goldberg, from 365 Nirvana, Here and Now by Josh Baran)

Just concentration.

Only presence.

Can we be entrusted to love?

"Do it!" -- we're told.

"Be it!" -- we intuit.

Just as the soft rains fill the streams,
Pour into the rivers,
And join together in the oceans,
So many the power of every moment
Of your goodness flow forth to awaken
And heal all beings;
Those here now, those gone before, those yet to come.
- Traditional Buddhist blessing

If we are love as it is loving, healing is the order of the day.

"What I command you is to love one another.’
(--John 15:17)

Stout fellow! Fine lassie! As you are, so will you be.

Etymology:
Middle English, from Anglo-French comander, from Latin commendare, from com- + mandare to entrust.

Into your hands, Origin/Source, we commend our spirits.

An angel is a message taken in and made one's own.

Go ahead!

Be an angel!

Speak -- we'll listen!

Do you feel different?

How elegant is the morning sun
Shining on the rafters and eaves.
How cool are the terrace and pond after the rain.
I burn incense to break the deep silence,
Drink the spring water and relax in joy.
When the mind is at ease and spirit is at peace,
Understanding is gained.
There is nothing left to comprehend.
Who can say that the realm of Tao is far from us?
How tranquil it is
Like the beginning of Heaven and Earth.
- Ni Tsan (1301-1374)

The argument shifts. Are you ready?

In their arguments with Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins, the faithful have been defending the existence of God. That was the easy debate. The real challenge is going to come from people who feel the existence of the sacred, but who think that particular religions are just cultural artifacts built on top of universal human traits. It’s going to come from scientists whose beliefs overlap a bit with Buddhism.

In unexpected ways, science and mysticism are joining hands and reinforcing each other. That’s bound to lead to new movements that emphasize self-transcendence but put little stock in divine law or revelation. Orthodox believers are going to have to defend particular doctrines and particular biblical teachings. They’re going to have to defend the idea of a personal God, and explain why specific theologies are true guides for behavior day to day. I’m not qualified to take sides, believe me. I’m just trying to anticipate which way the debate is headed. We’re in the middle of a scientific revolution. It’s going to have big cultural effects.
(--from The New York Times Op-Ed Column, The Neural Buddhists, By DAVID BROOKS, Published: May 13, 2008)

What's gotten into us?

We'll never be the same.

Ever.

Again.

Father is origin. Son is loving attention. Holy Spirit is enlightening consciousness.

Breathing mothers creation.

Let your love flow outward through the universe,
To its height, its depth, its broad extent,
A limitless love, without hatred or enmity.
- Sutta Nipata Buddha

When enlightening consciousness fills us, we begin to gather in communion.

In the evening of that same day, the first day of the week, the doors were closed in the room where the disciples were, for fear of the Jews. Jesus came and stood among them. He said to them, ‘Peace be with you’, and showed them his hands and his side. The disciples were filled with joy when they saw the Lord, and he said to them again, ‘Peace be with you.
‘As the Father sent me,
so am I sending you.’
After saying this he breathed on them and said:
‘Receive the Holy Spirit.
For those whose sins you forgive,
they are forgiven;
for those whose sins you retain,
they are retained.’
(--from John 20: 19-23)

You see, if you choose not to forgive, then it doesn't happen -- and you are burdened with carrying with you the weight of unforgiveness of an-other, namely none other than you.

But if you have understanding, and you forgive -- then everyone is unburdoned, and we go on, lightened and freed.

What do you think? Is it time for Pentecost?

Time for Holy Spirit?

Are you conscious?

Any awareness?

Of peace?

Breathe!

Note: The bookshop/bakery will be closed Friday. (Open Sat & Sun)
There will be no Sunday Evening Practice 11May.

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

“Love the whole world as a mother loves her only child.”
(--Hindu Prince Gautama Siddharta, the founder of Buddhism, 563-483 B.C.)

So much to learn about mothering!

When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing nearby, he said to his mother, "Woman, behold, your son!" Then he said to the disciple, "Behold, your mother!" And from that hour the disciple took her to his own home.
(--John 19: 26-27)

One's own home!

Two weeks later, Mu-ge the cat walks back in the door. Just like that.

Meister Eckhart said: "Leben ohne warum." (Life without why.)

No questioning why. Just life.

At itself. With itself.

Looking as itself.

Riggers climb masts, painters brush hulls, captains shake out coastal charts. Schooners in Camden Harbor begin to ready the season.

I row small skiff around harbor.

Many paths lead from
The foot of the mountain,
But at the peak
We all gaze at the
Single bright moon.
- Ikkyu (1394-1481)

Someone asks about a spiritual teacher's connection to religion. "He's not not Christian," is the response.

In John 17:1-11 is the phrase: "And eternal life is this:".

Fill in what "this" is.

It's not not this.

Heaven help us.

On the count of three, jump!

When Iraq was invaded so many cheered. When Iran is attacked, so many will leave.

The truly still mind, with which you were born, is the mind that moves freely. Without ignoring anything, it reacts wholeheartedly to everything it encounters, to everything on which it reflects. And yet, for all that, it is the mind that is never seized by anything, but is always ready to react on the spot to whatever it encounters next. The mind that is still is the mind that never forfeits its freedom and is able to constantly keep rolling and rolling and rolling.
- Soko Marinaga Roshi (1925-1995) Dailyzen.com

Leaving this country because it has disappeared will not be easy. There's a need for a foothold; a place from which to step off. That's the difficulty with a disappeared country; there's no ground remaining to it.

Listen; the time will come – in fact it has come already –
when you will be scattered,
each going his own way and leaving me alone.
(--from John 16:29-33)

As if Jesus knew our situation. He lived so long ago. Good God -- this is the 21st century! What use could someone from the first century have? Does he see us disappearing?

Part Four: Time and Eternity

VIII

LOOK back on time with kindly eyes,
He doubtless did his best;
How softly sinks his trembling sun
In human nature’s west!
(--Emily Dickinson (1830–86). Complete Poems. 1924.)

We'll look back at this time in our country and wonder how it was everyone was so impotent and uncaring.

Many will weep.

Most won't.

Rokpa the border collie licks peanut butter from my fingers. Rain tires us after 5:30am walk on Ragged Mtn. Sunday morning curls onto black chair.

Elsewhere, pastors, priests, rabbis, imams, zen masters, elders, and friends perform their rituals for people who hunger for justice, compassion, and a true experience of integrity. We've been fed illusion. Time to go beyond it.

When I started writing about Guantánamo several years ago, I thought the inmates might be lying and the Pentagon telling the truth. No doubt some inmates lie, and some surely are terrorists. But over time — and it’s painful to write this — I’ve found the inmates to be more credible than American officials.

Both Condoleezza Rice and Robert Gates have pushed to shut down Guantánamo because it undermines America’s standing and influence. They have been overruled by Dick Cheney and other hard-liners. In reality, it would take an exceptional enemy to damage America’s image and interests as much as President Bush and Mr. Cheney already have with Guantánamo.
(--from A Prison of Shame, and It’s Ours, By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF, Published: May 4, 2008, New York Times)

It is a difficult time. Belief comes hard. Trust in our leaders is so low you'd think someone would notice. Only uncaring arrogance can ignore the somber bitter loss of faith and trust. What will replace what is lost? It is hard to imagine how the people of America will survive the defeat of principles long held dear by generations in this country. A difficult, bleak time.

I am not in the world any longer,
but they are in the world,
and I am coming to you.
(from John 17: 1-11)

I've come to a fondness for the universe. So vast. Maybe without end. Of uncertain beginning. A lot like human life. Space might have as many as ten or twelve dimensions. Strings of energy dance emphatically with tonal reverberation at core of the theoretical investigation of matter and (what is called) energy or spirit. Far far beyond our capacity to grasp with our thinking. Yet close, very very close.

What made Nishitani question emptiness on the basis of his own present existence was precisely nihilism. It is through the mediation of nihilism that emptiness was removed from a museum showcase--that is, from its status as a dead 'thing' to be viewed or an object of archaeological study, to make its appearance in the real marketplace as a currency with actual power, restored to its status of living and operative spirit. The real marketplace, of which we speak here, also has the meaning of the town called "The Motley Cow," where Nietzsche's Zarathustra proclaimed his idea of the eternal recurrence. According to Nishitani, this "town called The Motley Cow" means "the multicolored world with its infinite variety of forms"; in other words, the contemporary world. To let emptiness loose into it is to walk that town barefoot, or to stand in the very midst of nihilism. According to Nishitani, it is precisely when standing there that a human being gets in touch with the point of origin or zero point from where religion as religion is born.
(--from Nihilism, Science, and Emptiness in [Keiji] Nishitani, by Hase Shoto, Univ of Hawaii Press)

Time to begin again.

Passing through.

Illusion.

What is looking and what is looked at co-construct what is being created as it is.

No kidding.

The entire day I searched for spring,
But spring I could not find,
In my straw sandals I tramped among the
Mountain peak clouds.
Home again, smiling, I finger a sprig of
Fragrant plum blossom;
Spring was right here on these branches
In all of its glory!
- Plum Blossom Nun (DailyZen.com)

One thing after another.

Nothing follows.

This.

Zen is seeing what-is.

Both the gaze that sees and the object that is seen construct themselves simultaneously in the one act of vision.
(--p.18, in Beauty, by John O'Donohue)

And, what-is takes place between us.

He'd not ascended to the Father. He told Mary not to cling to him, not to hold on to who and what he was. He preferred to be who and what he is. And that, whenever he became that which he is where he is as he is.

So, let him.

I saw the Son of Man, and he said to me, ‘Have no fear! I am the First and the Last. I was dead and now I am to live for ever and ever, and I hold the keys of death and of the underworld.’
(Apocalypse 1:17-18)

There being no time but now, Jesus is ascending as this is written, as this is read, as this is.

As are you and am I.

That's the kind of Thursday today is.

Nothing to cling to, so everything appears.

As it is.

With God.

A new template could help. A new religious life based on two rules: simplicity and kindness.

Some worry that America is heading for a big fall.

I let mind and body go
And gained a life of freedom
My old age is taking place
Among ten thousand peaks
I don’t let white clouds
Leave the valley lightly
I escort the moon as far
As my closed gate.
- Han-shan Te-ch’ing (1546-1623) Dailyzen.com

Rain has stopped.

Stars are out.

Cold wind blows.

After the fall, we'll try to get up.

When we bow we bow. Passing front room meditation space we bow. My eyes might look at crucifix. Or small seated Buddha. Or prayer flags hanging in window. Or icon of mother/child. Or the open emptiness of room itself. I have no object for the bow. Just bowing. With gratitude.

Do not sweep the fallen leaves,
For they are pleasant to hear on clear nights
In the wind, they rustle, as if sighing;
In the moonlight, their shadows flutter.
They knock on the window to wake a traveler;
Covering stairs, they hide moss.
Sad, the sight of them getting wet in the rain;
Let them wither away deep in the mountains.
- Kim Shi Sup (1435-1493)

Dog is bathed. White replaces gray. Mud drains into ground again.

You have been given more than human beauty,
and grace is poured out upon your lips,
(--from Psalm 44)

I'm glad the minister from Illinois spoke to the National Press Club. It's good to hear unapologetic wit, controversy, and spirit.

The mumbling incoherence of political swiping and sniping employed by contenders and commentators in this years horse race to the white house has become offensive and embarrassing. I'd like to hear something other than jejune backhand slaps.

I, Too, Sing America

I, too, sing America.

I am the darker brother.
They send me to eat in the kitchen
When company comes,
But I laugh,
And eat well,
And grow strong.

Tomorrow,

I'll be at the table
When company comes.
Nobody'll dare
Say to me,
"Eat in the kitchen,"
Then.

Besides,
They'll see how beautiful I am
And be ashamed--

I, too, am America.

(--From The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes, Knopf and Vintage Books. Copyright 1994)

In prison last Friday, the realization that words are alive, as are things alive, so too animals, humans, and all of nature, supernature, and that which we call divinity -- all life is alive, all being is, in itself -- holy.


Because we are mis-educated, Rev Jeremiah Wright says, we do not want to hear truth.

That's the truth.

Holy life!

Consider the words: "because he is with you, he is in you".

Except for dripping faucet into scraped yogurt plastic, silence.

Gospel
Jesus said:
‘If you love me you will keep my commandments.
I shall ask the Father,
and he will give you another Advocate
to be with you for ever,
that Spirit of truth
whom the world can never receive
since it neither sees nor knows him;
but you know him,
because he is with you, he is in you.
I will not leave you orphans;
I will come back to you.
In a short time the world will no longer see me;
but you will see me,
because I live and you will live.
On that day you will understand that I am in my Father
and you in me and I in you.
Anybody who receives my commandments and keeps them
will be one who loves me;
and anybody who loves me will be loved by my Father,
and I shall love him and show myself to him.’
(--John 14:15 - 21)

Look no further than to Raisin Bran box, Cuisinart machine, and Nupro container on washing machine under cabinets beside window where gray morning sits with unmoving branches in dooryard. Daybreak walk with Border Collie beyond brook to winding trail, back to cabin -- zafu, candle, incense, sitting. In kitchen, dripping faucet, water from high mountain melt finds way through ground to well, pumped up to metronomic beat.

Prayer Chain

My mother called to tell me
about an old classmate of mine who

was dying on the parish prayer chain—
or was very sick—or destitute—

or it had not worked out—the marriage—
or the kids were all on drugs—and

all the old mothers were praying intensely
for all the pain of their children

and for life—they were praying for life—
in their quiet rooms—sipping decaf coffee—

I bet they've been praying for me at times—
so I'll find my way—so I won't rob a bank—

I'll take them—the mystical prayers of old mothers—
it matters—all this patient and purposeful love.

(Poem: "Prayer Chain" by Tim Nolan. The Writer's Almanac)

I mention my mother's name, her mother's name, their daughter and granddaughter, the men surrounding them, and the rippling remembrance of many names -- all gone beyond, (some say dead), as I crossed bridge over brook on morning prayerful steps and walking meditation.

Within us. We are within the within. No outside, no inside. Only God in God. Just us in us. We in God. God within all. The solitude of stillness, a silence of mind, an unknowing so profound there seems no need ever to speak or hear words again.

The mind says: "Show yourself!"

Earth responds with itself.

Itself knowing no other.

King falls; game over.

With or without words...

Love itself, nothing else.

Mu-ge the cat has gone on walkabout. Traceless.

Lake water enters the bamboo fence,
Mountains surround the cottage.
A recluse’s life avoids this world.
The unused door hides behind
A green moss hue;
When a stranger passes,
The white birds fly in alarm.
Selling herbs, I taste and compare
But charge no price.
I do some gardening,
But love to do it unplanned.
Why is the wooded path leading
To T’ien-chu monastery
Still in autumn
Deeply dreaming in blue?
- Lin Pu

Six of us at Saturday Morning Practice consider hope as an obstacle.

There being no future, hope must have to do with what is in one's heart right now.

May each be where they need to be.

Happy, safe, truly at home.

Who knows where?

Vivian, in the drama W;T --(or Wit)-- says it is time for simplicity; time for kindness. She is dying.

All my life I have yearned for true reclusion,
Days on end sought wonders beyond this world:
Here old peasants enter their fields at dawn,
And mountain monks return to their temples at night.
Clear sounds come from pine-shaded springs,
Mossy walls filled with ancient truths.
I will lodge on this mountain forever,
I and the world are done with each other.
- Meng Hao-jan

At end her former professor reads to her about a bunny whose mother --like God -- will find it no matter where it hides; an allegory for soul being sought for by God.

There are choices to be made.

One is for kindness.

Take it.

Maria is eighty today. She and Tom stay for dinner after conversation.

What if Spirit is not other than matter?

What if Word became flesh?

Never leaving?

Is death when self meets no-other?

According to Buddha’s words, once one has fully entered the world, there is no breach or need to leave the world. These words contain the principle of attaining Buddhahood by means of the world dharma. In the Kegon Sutra it is said: “the Buddha Dharma is not different from the world dharma, and the world dharma is not different from the Buddha Dharma.” Anyone who does not put to use this principle of attaining Buddhahood in the world dharma itself knows nothing of the real intentions of the Buddha.

Any and every occupation is Buddhist practice. It is on the basis of our atcual work that enlightenment is to be attained. Therefore, no work can be anything other than Buddhist practice.
- Shosan (1579-1655)

Or is it when no-self meets other?

Earth is God's body.

A crowd of stars lines up
Bright in the deep night.
Lone lamp on the cliff,
The moon is not yet sunk,
Full and bright without being
Ground or polished.
Hanging in the black sky is my mind.
-- Han Shan (early 9th century)

To believe is to hold affectionately.

I believe in earth!

Some of the irregulars on Sunday talked about the country. The disappointment was about the failure of the three branches of government, the failure of the press, and the failure of the populace to hold accountable any of the above. The question on the minds of the three men and a woman had to do with cognitive dissonance.

Cognitive dissonance is a psychological state that describes the uncomfortable feeling when a person begins to understand that something the person believes to be true is, in fact, not true. Similar to ambivalence, the term cognitive dissonance describes conflicting thoughts or beliefs (cognitions) that occur at the same time, or when engaged in behaviors that conflict with one's beliefs. In academic literature, the term refers to attempts to reduce the discomfort of conflicting thoughts by performing actions that are opposite to one's beliefs.
(--http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance)

We're the good guys. Those without health care are people not particularly smart. Elected officials do indeed have the good of ordinary citizens as their primary responsibility. The war in Iraq was to protect the United States. Everything to know about September 11, 2001 has been told. This president is not an arrogant idiotes (it's a Greek word) serving the whims of corporations and promulgating shadow interests of ideologues. Osama Bin Laden started it. Saddam Hussein was the most dangerous leader in the world. The economy of the United States is in only a temporary slowdown. The Supreme Court is the most honorable judicial body and did not commit a hellish mistaken criminal act eight years ago. America clearly supports the down-trodden and helpless, but, really, the Chinese need our silence (as we need their imports) in their struggle against Tibet. There is equal justice for all, rich or poor, in this great nation.

If we meditate carefully on the above postulates, we might see into and through them. Carefully, we might begin to care for our peril.

There is a destination that must be reached within a day. One person endures great suffering and continues to walk with the aid of a stick. The other person decides to rest on a rock because it is too much for him. When he lies down and looks up, he sees clouds drifting in the wind and hallucinates that the rock he is on is also flying in the air. Cheerfully fantasizing that he has already reached his destination, he wakes up to find that he is just where he was before. The first person who continued to walk has already completed his trek. Although the second one finds himself far from his goal, he thinks it is useless to regret his error.
- Parable of Shakyamuni

The fire that destroys illusion longs to rage in our hearts and minds.

Do not be mistaken -- really -- we, at heart, long to be compassionate; we, in the deepest foundation of mind, long for wisdom and understanding.

The deception cultivated by the unwise and those devoid of compassion is not -- I repeat, is not -- how the true human being wishes to live in this existence.

Free Tibet.

Free the United States.

Free yourself.

Now -- let's get on with spring!

Rokpa meets Alden in Belfast

I go to visit a prominent monk
In mountain mist and a thousand peaks.
The master himself points out the road
And the moon hangs its lantern out for me.
- Han Shan (early 9th century)

Each hermit returns to solitude.

Happily.

Nothing lasts forever.

Everything else dissolves.

Be nothing else.

Let each their own faith.

There’s a tree that existed before the woods,
In age twice as old.
Its roots suffered as the valley changed,
Its leaves deformed by wind and frost.
People all laugh at its withered aspect,
Caring nothing about the core’s beauty.
When the bark is stripped off,
Only essence remains.
- Han Shan (early 9th century)

Pray yours be open.

Only the Alone.

The capacity of Mind is vast and great: It is like the emptiness of
space; It has neither breadth nor bounds; It is neither square nor round;
neither large nor small; It is neither blue nor yellow nor red nor white; It
has neither upper nor lower, long nor short; It knows of neither anger nor
pleasure; Neither right nor wrong; Neither good nor evil; It is without
beginning and without end.
- Sixth Patriarch

Doesn't know other.

If we say what is in our heart, is what is in our heart what is in the world surrounding us?

"What is" by any other name is the presencing Lord of creation, the permeating dwelling Christ within this existence, and the pervasive revealing Spirit of wisdom, love, and compassion of the now and present moment.

Each and every spring,
Blossoms gave my mind its
Comfort and pleasure:
Now more than sixty years
Have gone by like this.
- Saigyo (1118-1190)

Spring dawns cold along mountain. Sun warms quietly the yawning trails. Sacredness bows to each being passing in place or on foot.

Choirs of silent praise fill morning with stillness.

All is consecrated!

Each is blessed!

In early morning climb with ski poles and dog up Ragged Mtn, the solitude is complemented by another hiker with ski poles and dog passing the high incline like hermits on Cold Mtn. Her dog brings the excitable Rokpa back to waiting leash so they can continue on after trail greeting. Just some solitaries with loving companions walking up frozen ground!

Though frosts come down
night after night,
what does it matter?
They melt in morning sun.
Though snow falls
each passing year,
what does it matter?
With spring days it thaws.
Yet once let them settle
on a person's head,
fall and pile up--
then the new year
may come and go,
but never you'll see them fade away.
--Ryokan (trans. Burton Watson)

Sitting on stump then stone with green scarf as zafu cover -- the glittering expanse of Hosmer Pond, Penobscot Bay, Megunticook Mtn, and glorious sky -- tucked inside meditation and revealing mantra: this is presencing God!
Taxes are done. The president is giving me an incentive to spend. That's nice.

"If I could meditate, I'd be a better person."
When people start to meditate or to work with any kind of spiritual discipline, they often think that somehow they're going to improve, which is a sort of subtle aggression against who they really are. It's a bit like saying, "If I jog, I'll be a much better person." "If I could only get a nicer house, I'd be a better person." "If I could meditate and calm down, I'd be a better person"... But loving-kindness - maitri - toward ourselves doesn't mean getting rid of anything. Maitri means that we can still be crazy after all these years. We can still be angry after all these years. We can still be timid or jealous or full of feelings of unworthiness. The point is not to try to change ourselves. Meditation practice isn't about trying to throw ourselves away and become something better. It's about befriending who we are already. The ground of practice is you or me or whoever we are right now, just as we are. That's the ground, that's what we study, that's what we come to know with tremendous curiosity and interest.
(- Pema Chodron, The Wisdom of No Escape and the Path of Loving-Kindness from Everyday Mind, a Tricycle book edited by Jean Smith)

Talked with two curmudgeons today, one I hadn't seen in half a year. He says he'll be working on a house in France that Leonardo DaVinci himself once lived in.

Leonardo is best known for his painting the Mona Lisa, which is generally considered the most recognizable work of art in the world. He kept it with him for most of his life, working on it now and again. Today, it is probably the most analyzed work of art in history. For centuries, scholars have tried to determine the identity of the woman in the painting. A computer graphics consultant analyzed the painting and found that the nose, mouth, forehead, cheekbones, and eyebrows all lined up with a portrait Leonardo painted of himself. So he may have used himself as the model.
(--Garrison Kiellor, The Writer's Almanac)

We are models of ourselves.

It doesn't surprise that enigmatic self reflection appears as other.

The other's gaze is what places us where and as we are.

Not seen, we're nowhere.

Seen, there we are.

As what we see.

Bald Mountain has no snow on southern side. We hold our breath.

Yoshino Mountain:
White puffs on cherry limbs
Are fallen snow,
Informing me that blossoms
Will be late this year.
- Saigyo (1118-1190)

Forty-eight degrees leads us to quiet caution. Rokpa runs and leaps on snow patches on northeast side of Ragged Mountain, lays on them, tears wildly tossing white slosh crystals as he practices his Border Collie nutso sprints, and then lays across receding familiar puppy under-footing gnawing branch fragment while watching to see if I'm about to try to snatch it away.
These days when his female human companion retires to retreat at monastery he tries to be content with male human companion who trudges mountainside and scans for no-longer-hibernating black with white stripe waddling folk seeking food. This morning at Birch Point State Park we sat and watched three species of fowl bob in placid high tide off rocky promenade. He's seeing things for the first time.

As do poets and those about to die -- see things for the first time.

Skunk walks into barn. Passes Rokpa. Passes me. (The horror!)

The unenlightened person does not understand his own true nature, does not realize the Pure Land in his own body, and thus petitions all over. The enlightened person never differs no matter where he is. For this reason the Buddha says, “Wherever I may be I am always in comfort and bliss…If only your mind is pure, your own nature is itself the Pure Land of the West.
- Platform Sutra

It will be a long spring if skunks make us a steady stop.

The thing about skunks is their smell. They put it on others.

There are people like that.
We'll have to be wary.

Leash the vulnerable.

Avoid the stinkers.

It doesn't matter what you believe, can you behave differently each time truth appears?

For many springs
I’ve come here to meet
And unite my mind
With the opening blossoms, so
I’m made of many recollections.
- Saigyo (1118-1190)

I'm agnostic to belief systems. I want to know if the inquiry is open and active.

Followed closely by compassionate, joyful, grateful action.

When you have nothing to say...

Being in tremendous turmoil, the unoriented do not know that their own mind is Buddha. They search about, outside of themselves, spending the whole day contemplating the Buddha and paying homage. But where is the Buddha? Do not entertain any such false views. Awaken to your own mind: outside the mind there can be no Buddha.
- Bodhidharma

...say it.

Kristin said it tonight: "War asks us to be other than love."

That's the shame of it.

Though it has no bridge,
The cloud climbs up to heaven;
It does not seek the aid
Of Gautama’s sutras.
- Ikkyu (1394-1481)

We wish to be what God is.
Not other than.

Love.

Dog laps water. Cat chews kibbles. Night.

Nowhere is there place
To stop and live, so only
Everywhere will do:
Each and every grass-made hut soon leaves
Its place within this withering world.
- Saigyo (1118-1190)

The General and the Ambassador regale Congress with Arabian stories that are not good enough to placate worries. The champagne has been pushed to the back of the fridge.

It is frightening to witness this hate-torn world suddenly united for one brief hour, against Jesus. And what does he do? Every trial is in reality a struggle -- but not this one. Jesus refuses to fight. He proves nothing. He denies nothing. He attacks nothing. Instead he stands by and lets events run their course -- more, at the proper moment, he says precisely what is necessary for his conviction. His words and attitude have nothing to do with the logic or demands of a defence. Their source lies elsewhere. The accused makes no attempt to hinder whatever is to come; but his silence is neither that of weakness nor of desperation. It is divine reality; full, holy consciousness of the approaching "hour"; perfect readiness. His silence brings into being what is to be.
(--Romano Guardini, in Jesus Christ, Meditations, c.1959)

The silence of the American people allows the two messengers to reprise and resound their winning tales to investors in the war. The dividends are trickling out into the halls where once honest brokers did not try to parse democracy and decency.

Transcending Everyday Consciousness
When we sit down to meditate, we are trying to transcend our everyday consciousness: the one with which we transact our ordinary business, the one used in the worlds market-place as we go shopping, bring up our children, work in an office or in our business, clean the house, check our bank statements, and all the rest of daily living. That kind of consciousness is known to everyone and without it we can't function. It is our survival consciousness and we need it for that. It cannot reach far enough or deep enough into the Buddha's teachings, because these are unique and profound; our everyday consciousness is neither unique or profound, it's just utilitarian. In order to attain the kind of consciousness that is capable of going deeply enough into the teachings to make them our own and thereby change our whole inner view, we need a mind with the ability to remove itself from the ordinary thinking process. That is only possible through meditation. There is no other way. Meditation is therefore a means and not an end in itself. It is a means to change the mind's capacity in such a way that we can see entirely different realities from the ones we are used to.
(- Ayya Khema, from When the Iron Eagle Flies, from Everyday Mind, a Tricycle book edited by Jean Smith)

Entirely different realities would fit about now.

I've got to get back on my cushion.

Make the time right.

A new country.

A new seat.

Breathe!

Light.

Tonight I think of the men and women in jail and prison. Their families living in questions about guilt, innocence, bad breaks, and hard time.

I think about prisons of ego in which so many of us do a bid.

If you break open
The cherry tree,
There is not a single flower.
But the skies of spring
Bring forth the blossoms!
- Ikkyu (1394-1481)

Then I think about surrender. I think about the hard acceptance that precedes freedom, a freedom even in prison, or in the shadow of an ego no longer completely in charge.

Eckhart Tolle with Oprah said one could be whole without being perfect. I like that.

We are whole. We don't perhaps realize it yet, but we are.

The mother cries for her son, for herself, for her recently deceased husband.

And when I talk to her I am humbled by the wholeness one and one reveals.

In sorrow, no separation. In solitude, no loneliness.

In a moment of words moving through stillness, nothing is said.

But this.

Awareness.

Our neighbor's 9 month old cat has wandered off. We check our barn. The squirrels aren't giving away anything.

"To lose our selves and to become totally absorbed in God," says John Main, "through the human consciousness of Jesus -- is the precise purpose of all meditation -- to lose our lives."

At center, God. No need to go anywhere. Except perhaps to drop through illusory self into true center. Whether nature, humankind, acts, thoughts, feelings, or noise. We fall into silence.

In Pali, heart and mind are one word (citta), but in English we have to differentiate between the two to make the meaning clear. When we attend to the mind, we are concerned with the thinking process and the intellectual understanding that derives from knowledge, and with our ability to retain knowledge and make use of it. When we speak of heart we think of feelings and emotions, our ability to respond with our fundamental being. Although we may believe that we are leading our lives according to our thinking process, that is not the case. If we examine this more closely, we will find that we are leading our lives according to our feelings and that our thinking is dependent upon our feelings. The emotional aspect of ourselves is of such great importance that its purification is the basis for a harmonious and peaceful life, and also for good meditation.
- Ayya Khema, When the Iron Eagle Flies
from Everyday Mind, a Tricycle book edited by Jean Smith

I write to a man in jail pending court date on charges of child sexual abuse.

I write you just to write you. I’m pretty sure your situation sucks. You’ve probably come up against the strong and violent dislike on the part of both inmates and guards for the category of person who wears the charges you’ve got on your name. It’s a hard fact that many feel that vengeance and punishment are a sworn duty to be carried out even by some whose own situations are barely different than yours. But you know this already.

I write to tell you that you’ve found yourself a rough spiritual path. But a spiritual path it is. These words might sound silly, and I apologize if they are impertinent to you -- but, nevertheless, this is where you are for now. And, as you know, there is only now. You’ve come to a point in your life where you might not want to be, but there you are. We all are.

Child sexual abuse is a frightening crime. So many suffer. So little rehabilitation.

We Bring Democracy To The Fish

It is unacceptable that fish prey on each other.
For their comfort and safety, we will liberate them
into fishfarms with secure, durable boundaries
that exclude predators. Our care will provide
for their liberty, health, happiness, and nutrition.
Of course all creatures need to feel useful.
At maturity the fish will discover their purposes.

Poem: "We Bring Democracy To The Fish" by Donald Hall, from White Apples and the Taste of Stone. Houghton Mifflin Company, 2007.

I must rehabilitate my heart/mind.

I must not remain criminal.

I must fall into the center.

God help us!

We might learn, as she writes, the grand conspiracy of life.

What is the hearth of the heart if not the good earth: the soil, the life-blood of rivers, the throbbing life-force in the intimate depths of every green thing, every flowering form, every singing, winging bird? And what is the heart if not this resonance, this inner knowing through which we love and, in turn, know anew and love again? We breathe in and we inhale the exhalation of forests, plankton, desert sage and the fragrance of spreading spring violets. We breathe out and the trees inhale us, take us into themselves in this grand conspiracy of life, this godly inspiration, this earthly distillation, this human intersection of all that is.
(--Return to Earth, in Earthlines, By Diane Pendola, http://www.ecocontemplative.org/elspring08.html)

I'd be willing to be taken in.

With all.

That is.

The nice elderly Catholic lady from Union wouldn't touch the dog because she was going to receive holy communion in an hour.

The dog didn't mind. He was looking up at her and wagging his tail at a holy communion.

It often escapes me when exactly it happened that Americans began fearing their leaders and hating their country.

An illusion of participatory governance has been shattered.

Only God feels the disappointment of it.

Forget the resurrection. Christians have never understood the incarnation.

Becoming human has never been of interest to the betters among us.

There's no one to lead. Don't follow.

Brian, visiting the prison conversation for the first time, said in final circle: "I am just here listening." Not that I heard this. Ryan did. He listened.

Sentient beings are really Buddha.
Like water and ice;
Apart from water, no ice;
Outside of sentient beings, no Buddha.
Not knowing it is near
They seek for it afar!
Just like being in water,
But crying for thirst!
- Hakuin

In Buddhist group a bowl of donuts, m&m's, chips, and cookies to celebrate H's release next week. Time magazine has the Dalai Lama on cover.

I rejoiced when the Lord listened
to the voice of my pleading;
I rejoiced for he turned his ear to me,
as I called to him day after day.

The ropes of death were around me,
the agonies of the underworld were upon me.
I came upon trouble and anguish,
and I called on the name of the Lord:
“Lord, free my soul”.

The Lord is kind and just,
our God takes pity on us.
The Lord guards the weak;
I am cast down, but he will save me.

Turn, my soul, to your rest,
for the Lord is kind to you.
He has torn my soul away from death,
my eyes from tears,
my feet from falling.

I shall walk before the Lord in the land of the living.
--Psalm 114 (116A)

In Protective Custody a new drop-in to the table is making sure we understand what he understands about Romans. We tell him it's meant to be a conversation, no matter how good the words he persistently reads at us. We get into a little Marcos Borg and Dominic Crosson. I see a man I used to see in seg. He's walking wide circles around the pod. I greet him. He wondered why I stopped visiting him. I was only a temporary chaplain, I'm a volunteer now, I say. He figured I'd catch him up.

Two men reading Tolle provide the 3rd conversation with something from chapter 3. Ego says we're bad; ego says we're good. Forget both. We're just who we are.

We leave the sliding heavy clanking doors behind and introduce Diane to Rokpa. He is waggy tail and puppy cute. His fiddle hangs (only sometimes) outside the door to the house.

The fresh baked bread in Rockland's Atlantic Baking Company smells just right.

People continue to talk about some bad times still to come.

April 4, 2008
81% in Poll Say Nation Is Headed on the Wrong Track
By DAVID LEONHARDT and MARJORIE CONNELLY

Americans are more dissatisfied with the country’s direction than at any time since the New York Times/CBS News poll began asking about the subject in the early 1990s, according to the latest poll.

In the poll, 81 percent of respondents said they believed “things have pretty seriously gotten off on the wrong track,” up from 69 percent a year ago and 35 percent in early 2002.

Although the public mood has been darkening since the early days of the war in Iraq, it has taken a new turn for the worse in the last few months, as the economy has seemed to slip into recession. There is now nearly a national consensus that the country faces significant problems.

A majority of nearly every demographic and political group — Democrats and Republicans, men and women, residents of cities and rural areas, college graduates and those who finished only high school — say the United States is headed in the wrong direction. Seventy-eight percent of respondents said the country was worse off than five years ago; just 4 percent said it was better off.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/04/us/04poll.html?_r=1&hp=&oref=slogin&pagewanted=print

Robert the Trappist monk said again this year: "Cheer up! Things are going to get worse."

No doubt.

Cheers!

They say a bicycle is best balanced by moving forward.

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

There's tires needing air.

It's not easy being a fool. It's easy fooling myself.

If people are quiet,
They can be quiet anywhere.
If people aren’t quiet
They won’t be quiet in the mountains.
Everything depends on you.
Life is transient,
Like a flash of lightning in a dream.
Before we receive this form,
We had another face,
Our original face.
We can’t see it with our eyes.
We can only know it with wisdom.
- Chi-ch’eng

I'll try to make light of it -- my foolishness.

When it is dark enough, you can see the stars.
(-Charles A. Beard)

There must be a lot of darkness tonight; there are (at least) a hundred billion stars in our galaxy alone.

This is our original face.

Wise up!

Watching Beyond Belief a documentary about two 9/11 widows who work to help widows in Afghanistan.

The very fact of life in Afghanistan for women.

The Tables Turned

Up! up! my Friend, and quit your books;
Or surely you'll grow double:
Up! up! my Friend, and clear your looks;
Why all this toil and trouble?

The sun above the mountain's head,
A freshening lustre mellow
Through all the long green fields has spread,
His first sweet evening yellow.

Books! 'tis a dull and endless strife:
Come, hear the woodland linnet,
How sweet his music! on my life,
There's more of wisdom in it.

And hark! how blithe the throstle sings!
He, too, is no mean preacher:
Come forth into the light of things,
Let Nature be your teacher.

She has a world of ready wealth,
Our minds and hearts to bless--
Spontaneous wisdom breathed by health,
Truth breathed by cheerfulness.

One impulse from a vernal wood
May teach you more of man,
Of moral evil and of good,
Than all the sages can.

Sweet is the lore which Nature brings;
Our meddling intellect
Mis-shapes the beauteous forms of things:--
We murder to dissect.

Enough of Science and of Art;
Close up those barren leaves;
Come forth, and bring with you a heart
That watches and receives.
(- Poem by William Wordsworth)

There is much for us to watch and receive. All that is required is that we watch, and receive.

There's a way in which each us makes small choices every day. And after a period of time those choices develop into a pattern, and we might be thought of as choosing ourselves. ...It's like any one of us -- we choose our way to being ourselves."
(Spoken by brother of one of the American women).

Who do we choose to be?

In our life?

Lets.

Choose life.

To be desolate it is not necessary to despair. We might feel abandoned and alone; we might be abandoned and alone -- but if that is where we are, then that is what we have to work with.

desolate -- 1: devoid of inhabitants and visitors : deserted
2: joyless, disconsolate, and sorrowful through or as if through separation from a loved one
3 a: showing the effects of abandonment and neglect : dilapidated b: barren, lifeless c: devoid of warmth, comfort, or hope : gloomy

The Writer's Almanac points out that today is the birthday of Vincent Van Gogh:

His brother Theo was an art dealer, and for years he had supplied Van Gogh with a small monthly stipend. In return, Van Gogh gave his brother every canvas he painted. He wrote thousands of letters to Theo. "How much sadness there is in life," he wrote. "The right thing is to work." He moved to a small town north of Paris and painted feverishly until insanity overtook him. He cut off part of his own ear and was placed in an asylum at St. Rémy. One of his greatest paintings, Starry Night (1889), was painted while he was confined there. He left the asylum for good in the spring of 1890. In July, just as he was starting to receive favorable attention for his work, he committed suicide. Shortly before he died, he wrote "I feel a failure."
(--Garrison Keillor, 30March2008 The Writer's Almanac)

Monastics know desolation and attempt to live through it. They attend to Philippians 1:21, "For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain." There is an attitude of prayer that sees and accepts troubles as material for building one's life.

There's nothing wrong with easy. There's nothing right with difficult. What happens is what happens. We have to face what happens, deal with it, and make our way through.

To practice Zen, you need deep roots.
People with deep roots are rare.
In the past anyone could practice Zen.
But not now.
Zen depends completely on yourself.
It’s much harder, especially now.
- Sheng-hi

What's harder, I suppose, is a mind that comprehends that none of us are abandoned, none of us alone. That mind, not often attained, sees and comprehends that the words "Love your neighbor as yourself" are as simple and direct a revelation as any Zen Master might present in a koan. Our neighbor is our self.

If ye wonder whether evil karma can be neutralized or not,
Then know that it is neutralized by desire for goodness.
But they who knowingly do evil deeds,
Exchange a mouthful of food for infamy.
They who knowing not whither they themselves are bound,
Yet presume to pose as guides for others,
Do injury both to themselves and others.
If pain and sorrow ye desire sincerely to avoid,
Avoid, then, doing harm to others.
(- W.Y. Evans-Wentz, Tibets Great Yogi Milarepa , from Everyday Mind, a Tricycle book edited by Jean Smith)

I don't often see nor comprehend this truth. Emotions, blindness, unwillingness to confront demons of divisiveness all trip me up. Sometimes I depart. I abandon the work of deconstructing a self that wants to dominate any particular landscape it thinks it can. I absent myself from the congregate and imagine they are cause of my disconsolation.On bookshelf of Hermitage Library is a title Try Giving Yourself Away, by David Dunn. He ends the book with the words:

It takes all kinds of people to make an interesting world, and it takes all kinds of experiences to make an interesting life.
We can never escape from people; and we will never cease having experiences. The art of truly successful living is to mix the people and the experiences that make up our individual lives in such fashion that they produce the greatest possible harvest of happiness, for ourselves and those around us.
The surest way I know to do this is by giving ourselves away, not just as a hobby -- though there is no possible objection to starting it on a hobby basis-- but on a day-in-and-day-day-out way of life. It calls for god will toward everybody with whom we rub elbows -- in or family life (where assuredly it should start), in our daily work, even our fleeting contacts with strangers.
At times it will require all the kindliness, understanding and tolerance we can muster, and a firm determination not to be discouraged by the occasional repulses we will suffer or the times when our giving will be met with suspicious cynicism. But if we persist in sowing seeds of friendliness, helpfulness and good will all along the way, we will find ourselves traveling a Happy Road in the company of a host of wonderful friends, and hugely enjoying life in spite of its troubles and vicissitudes. What is more, we will be sowing a rich harvest for our later years.
(--pp.127,128 in Try Giving Yourself Away, by David Dunn, Prentice Hall, 1947)

Anyone doing anything affects everyone. Thus, Dunn's "we" and "our" in his final sentence refers to all of us. In a desolate time the prayer for good harvest is heartfelt.

Economic scarcity, war's expanding cancer, the isolation of so many brothers and sisters, and the worry that any refreshing light will itself be extinguished -- these are contributors to what increasingly seems like a dark time. More difficult still is the perception that some revel in the desolation visited upon others.

Theodore Roethke wrote in this poem for us:

In a Dark Time

In a dark time, the eye begins to see,
I meet my shadow in the deepening shade;
I hear my echo in the echoing wood--
A lord of nature weeping to a tree,
I live between the heron and the wren,
Beasts of the hill and serpents of the den.

What's madness but nobility of soul
At odds with circumstance? The day's on fire!
I know the purity of pure despair,
My shadow pinned against a sweating wall,
That place among the rocks--is it a cave,
Or winding path? The edge is what I have.

A steady storm of correspondences!
A night flowing with birds, a ragged moon,
And in broad day the midnight come again!
A man goes far to find out what he is--
Death of the self in a long, tearless night,
All natural shapes blazing unnatural light.

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.
(--Poem by Theodore Roethke)

It's time.

To give our self.

A Way.

Grussgott!

(Greet God!)

Sun brightens white on Bald Mountain this latest snow in spring as March prepares to step off calendar. Puffs of white snowy breath blow from firs partially up slope. Everything has slowed within. Each branch holds white extending bouquet of gathered flakes to air looping through pass between two mountains. Cars ride road to Snow Bowl's final weekend of skiing, tubing, and snowboarding. I've no desire to go anywhere. Where is there to go?

The entire universe is one bright pearl.
When the right time comes,
The essence of the bright pearl can be grasped;
It is suspended in emptiness,
Hidden in the lining of clothes,
Found under the chin of dragons
And in the headdresses of kings.
This pearl is always inside our clothing,
That is, inside us, our real nature.
Do not think about putting it on the surface;
Is should be kept in headdresses and under jaws.
Never attempt to wear it on the surface.
- Dogen (1200-1253)

Woman writes from Manhattan saying she walks to past haunts along city's streets; the first time in 34 years, she says, amazing to be here, or anywhere, with no "hafta be back." or for that matter, no "hafta do" anything.

Snow, Aldo

Once, I was in New York,
in Central Park, and I saw
an old man in a black overcoat walking
a black dog. This was springtime
and the trees were still
bare and the sky was
gray and low and it began, suddenly,
to snow:
big fat flakes
that twirled and landed on the
black of the man's overcoat and
the black dog's fur. The dog
lifted his face and stared
up at the sky. The man looked
up, too. "Snow, Aldo," he said to the dog,
"snow." And he laughed.
The dog looked
at him and wagged his tail.

If I was in charge of making
snow globes, this is what I would put inside:
the old man in the black overcoat,
the black dog,
two friends with their faces turned up to the sky
as if they were receiving a blessing,
as if they were being blessed together
by something
as simple as snow
in March.

(--Poem: "Snow, Aldo" by Kate DiCamillo. © Kate DiCamillo. Used with permission of Pippin Properties, Inc., The Writer's Almanac)

Fifteen years ago looking across at Bald I saw a herd of deer single file traversing the mountain through deep snow. Those gathered in front room marveled at the passage. One by one over the years many have been caught by cars while crossing Barnestown Road between Bald and Ragged. Often luck has kept one from leaping in front of my car -- some have -- but like a dream in twilight made me wonder what had gone by ghostlike to safety.

Watching Bush's War on Frontline offers similar feeling -- what has gone by? Lingering incomprehension as to whether what has been done occurred out of intentional malfeasance or ignorant ineptitude. Also hard to comprehend is the pass given to the perpetrators of such a disastrous misadventure. My departed friend Richard would frown on what he called "going political" in this space. (I miss his chide.)

Essay on the Personal

Because finally the personal
is all that matters,
we spend years describing stones,
chairs, abandoned farmhouses—
until we're ready. Always
it's a matter of precision,
what it feels like
to kiss someone or to walk
out the door. How good it was
to practice on stones
which were things we could love
without weeping over. How good
someone else abandoned the farmhouse,
bankrupt and desperate.
Now we can bring a fine edge
to our parents. We can hold hurt
up to the sun for examination.
But just when we think we have it,
the personal goes the way of
belief. What seemed so deep
begins to seem naive, something
that could be trusted
because we hadn't read Plato
or held two contradictory ideas
or women in the same day.
Love, then, becomes an old movie.
Loss seems so common
it belongs to the air,
to breath itself, anyone's.
We're left with style, a particular
way of standing and saying,
the idiosyncratic look
at the frown which means nothing
until we say it does. Years later,
long after we believed it peculiar
to ourselves, we return to love.
We return to everything
strange, inchoate, like living
with someone, like living alone,
settling for the partial, the almost
satisfactory sense of it.
(--Poem by Stephen Dunn)

Strange.

Inchoate.

The partial.

Almost satisfactory.

This Saturday.