Maybe the outside world is a dream. Not what it seems. Real, but not what we think it is.

What does that make the inner world? When we awaken, is everything inside/out?

At Sunday Evening Conversation we read words about Thomas Berry. He died June first. Forty years ago I studied with him in his graduate class on the Bhagavad Gita. He seemed to my conditioned eyes to be an old man then. He lived forty years longer.

Moreover, in contrast to Descartes' concentration on rationalization [Giambattista] Vico [1668-1744] emphasized the poetic wisdom and creative imagination needed for the future.

In his study, Vico used large, sweeping categories to describe major historical periods since the time of Noah and the flood. Looking at human history from a macrophase perspective he identified three ages: the age of the gods, the age of the heroes, and the age of men. Corresponding to each age are different kinds of customs, laws, languages, arts, and economies embracing quite distinctive cultures. moreover, in each stage a different human faculty dominates, namely, sensation, imagination, and intellect.

In the first period, the age of the gods, a theocratic government supported by mythology prevails. In the second period, the age of the heroes, an aristocratic government dominates along with class conflict and slavery. In the third age, the age of men, democracies appear and the power of reason and human rights emerge. Vico sees this cycle as recurring at different points in human history as we move from myth to rationality and from savage to civilized states. In each of these periods the role of natural or poetic wisdom and intuition has been crucial in founding institutions which have given rise to the nations. Yet the movement through history is punctuated by disintegration and dissolution. Vico called these the periods of the "barbarism of reflection." In passing through such phases of entropy history moves toward a "creative barbarism of sense."

Vico's thought has clearly been seminal for Berry. This is evident in several respects: the sweeping periodization of history, the notion of the barbarism of reflection, and the poetic wisdom and creative imagination needed to sustain civilizations. With regard to periodization, Berry has defined four major ages in human history namely, the tribal shamanic, the traditional civilizational, the scientific technological, and the ecological or ecozoic age. He observes that we are currently moving into the ecozoic era which he feels will be characterized by a new understanding of human-earth. relations. Nonetheless, he acknowledges that we are in a period of severe cultural pathology with regard to our blind yet sophisticated technological assault on the earth. In other words, we are in a time of a "barbarism of reflection". Vicols description of people in the midst of such a barbarism is uncannily reminiscent of contemporary western societies:

… such people, like so many beasts, have fallen into the custom of each man thinking only of his own private interests and have reached the extreme of delicacy, or better pride, in which like wild animals they bristle and lash out at the slightest displeasure. Thus no matter how great the throng and press of their bodies, they live like wild beasts in a deep solitude of spirit and will…(3)

To extract ourselves from this cultural pathology of alienation from one another and destruction of the earth Berry calls for a New Story of the universe. By evoking such a deep poetic wisdom he feels we may be able to create a sustainable future. He calls for reinventing the human at the species level which implies moving from our cultural coding to recover our genetic coding of relatedness to the earth. By articulating a new mythic consciousness of our profound connectedness to the earth we may be able to reverse the self-destructive cultural tendencies we have put in motion with regard to the planet.
(--from Biography of Thomas Berry, by Mary Evelyn Tucker, Yale University, http://www.thomasberry.org/Biography/tucker-bio.html)

I fell into silence the last two days. Spring fell into summer. Rain has been falling three days and will continue for three more days.

Silence is a country with no passport requirement.

Slip the border.

Stay a while.

Listen.

Well.

Sacred Heart yesterday. Immaculate Heart today. Heart breaks. Not whole; not disintegrated. Just broken. Broken heart throughout.

Bend down and there it is:
No need to wrest it from others.
With the Way in complete agreement,
The mere touch of a hand is spring:
The way we come upon blooming flowers,
The way we see the year renew itself.
What comes this way will stay;
What is gotten by force will drain away.
A secluded person on an empty mountain,
While rain falls, picks some blades of duckweed.
Freely feeling the flash of dawn:
Leisurely, within the celestial balance.
- Ssu-k'ung T'u (837-908)

What is the idea of God? At Maine State Prison, D. says "Religion is that which screws up the idea of God."

Not the idea we have about God. Rather, the idea of God. What is, then, the idea of God?

Are we?

The dialogue is familiar:

"Goodbye," he said.

"Goodbye," said the fox. "And now here is my secret, a very simple secret: It is only with the heart that one can see clearly; what is essential is invisible to the eye."

"What is essential is invisible to the eye," the little prince repeated, so that he would be sure to remember.

"It is the time you have lavished on your rose that makes your rose so important."

"It is the time I have lavished for my rose--" said the little prince, so that he would be sure to remember.

"Men have forgotten this truth," said the fox. "But you must not forget it. You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed. You are responsible for your rose . . ."

"I am responsible for my rose," the little prince repeated, so that he would be sure to remember.
(-- from Le Petit Prince, by Antoine De Saint-Exupery, 1943)

Drizzle is inaudible right now.

"Eidos" is the Greek term for what is seen -- the immutable genuine nature of a thing. http://www.philosophypages.com/dy/e.htm

Do we have any idea of the idea of God?

What is seen...as God is...seen?

Such intriguing stillness!

Rain speaks. Rain silences. Rain fills basement. Sump pump braves submersion. Water recedes.

How amazing, how amazing!
Hard to comprehend that
Nonsentient beings expound Dharma.
It simply cannot be heard with the ear,
But when sound is heard with the eye,
Then it is understood.
- Tung-shan (807-869)

Language speaks.

Silence speaks.

Listen.

To both.

Wednesday's Laura Soul-Friend Conversation came to focus on how we language our perceptions. There's a curious disintegration of discourse and nomenclature going on in the political and governmental arenas in the United States and around the world..

--"Ending War" now means increasing troops, munitions, and spending.
--"Protecting the Environment" now means giving polluters and ravagers ten more years to consider reducing their destruction of the earth.
--"Ending Abortion" now means killing doctors and attacking clinics.
--"Love Your Country" now means supporting whatever it does with regard to warfare, capitalism, medical insurance, or powerful corporations.
--"Get Out and Vote" now means believing that no matter how frustrated you are about the policies and direction of the leaders, it can be solved only at the voting booth every 2 or 4 years.
--"Change is Coming" now means wait 2 or 4 more years before acting on the belief that voting changes anything truly important.
--"We are a Christian Nation" now means that however and whatever anyone with a gun decides the Bible means to them, they are free to start a war, kill a doctor, deny science, let illness be God's judgment, and hope for the end of the world so that you can be with Jesus in some grand hereafter. {Read "Allah" and "Muslim" for other parts of the world.}
(-wfh)

Amos Wilder once wrote:

Generations live in it (language) as a habitat in which they are born and die... The language of a people is its fate. Thus the poets or seers who purify the language of the tribe are truly world-makers. (--Amos Wilder, Early Christian Rhetoric)

Thomas Merton once wrote that we need a new language of prayer.

This new language of prayer has to come out of something which transcends all our traditions, and comes out of the immediacy of love. (--in The Asian Journal of Thomas Merton (1975) Part One : Ceylon / November 29 - December 6)

Watching the video from "Rethinking Afghanistan" by Robert Greenwald, (http://rethinkafghanistan.com/) is part of the maddening deterioration of language -- a version of "We'll free you by killing you." Far too much latitude is given to the language: "War is messy," and "Civilians, unfortunately, are accidentally injured."

We have to listen deeper for the new language.

Each of you has a priceless
Jewel in your own body.
It radiates light through your eyes,
Shining through the
Mountains, river, and earth.
It radiates light through your ears,
Taking in all sounds, good and bad.
It radiates light through
Your six senses day and night.
This is also called absorption in light.
You yourself do not recognize it,
But it is in your physical body,
Supporting it inside and out,
Not letting it tip over.
Even if you are carrying
A double load of rocks
Over a single-log bridge,
It still doesn’t let you fall over.
What is it?
If you seek in the slightest,
It cannot be seen.
- Ta-an (d.883)

Some would say that on a higher level God knows what is happening and no one can really be harmed.

My faith seems to falter at the belief that it doesn't matter what happens to people, the earth, animals, and this unusual thing we call "existence." I don't know how to respond to those who say it is all an illusion created by our mind's perceptions, and that if we change our perception, it's all good. Some say that in this illusion we call life, it doesn't matter one way or the other. I'm agnostic in the face of such statements.

I'll be nailing ceder shingles as I consider these matters.

It will be my meditation. My prayer.

My inhaling preparation for a language soon to arrive in some coming exhalation.

Until I am able to hear the wisdom residing in the gap between breath coming and going, I'll merely practice.

As breath arrives.

As breath departs.

This is my faith.

This, my fate.

Spring begins to run out. Metaphors are like that. They step in, stand for something beyond them, then step out. We're left with what has been pointed to, only without taking off shoes to stay for long.

Blue pines and green bamboos
Shade my window,
Flowers smile,
Warblers sing by my hermitage.
As I climb the stone steps,
I see the strengths of cedars;
At the pure cool mountaintop,
Buddha is bright and vivid.
- Deiryu

It's time to walk away from snarling mockery. Leave that to the snarling mockers It's their job.

June has grown full of itself.

We need a new language -- our fate depends on it, as does the prayer needed to face this fate.

The old thing is dead.

A new reality comes to breathe.

One breath at a time.

Now it is nearing midnight.

The thought of enlightenment has many names but they all refer to one and the same mind. Nagarjuna said, "The mind that fully sees into the uncertain world of birth and death is called the thought of enlightenment." Thus if we maintain this mind, this mind can become the thought of enlightenment.
- Dogen (1200-1253)

Don't think about it.

Sip water.

Go to bed.

Amnesty International, meeting at hermitage tonight, graciously leave us a copy of Walk for Tibet 2009, Indiana to New York, about Jigme Norbu's 900 mile walk. Norbu's father , recently deceased, was the older brother of the Dalai Lama. "The walk was a son's tribute to his father, Norbu said." (Final line in book.)

Walk, don't think.

Sleep, don't think.

Swallow water.

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There's suspicion that not much is changing in Washington. Maybe that's par for the course. I never liked golf, golf metaphors, nor country clubs.

The universal body of reality
Is so subtle that you do not
Hear it when you deliberately listen for it,
And you do not see it when you look at it.
As for the pure knowledge
That has no teacher,
How can it be attained by thought or study?
- Huanglong

No teacher. No knowledge. No special understanding.

All that remains is the hard and disconcerting fact of learning.

Learning itself.

Forget change.

Instead, learn.

Begin there.

Hospitality, meditative prayer, and conversation are three types of practice.

The practice community is diverse and differentiated. The intention is unity, the purpose undifferentiated.

Attain the center of emptiness,
Preserve the utmost quiet;
As myriad things act in concert
I thereby observe the return.
Things flourish,
Then each returns to its root.
Returning to the root
Is called stillness:
Stillness is called return to Life,
Return to Life is called the constant;
Knowing the constant is called enlightenment.
- Tao-te Ching

If we see everything as an act of love, then every act, no matter its intent, is an act of love. Our eyes and heart ensure the transformation.

Late spring rain drenches earth.

Dog gnaws bone.

My heart sets about to see as seeing should be.

Nailing cedar shingles. Picking up pile of lumber at contractors pickup.

Even if, bright as a flash of lightning,
Death were to strike you today,
Be prepared to die without sorrow
Or regret, giving up attachment to
What you are leaving behind.
Without ever ceasing to recognize
The authentic view of the real,
Leave this life like the eagle
That soars into the blue sky.
- Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche (1910-1991)

Midnight.

I'm already dead. Nor have I ever been born.

D5, galvanized box nails. Five pounds of them.

Aspirations to Holy Spirit throughout.

This is what you are.

The Course in Miracles says, "I am as God created me."

I Said To The Wanting-Creature Inside Me

I said to the wanting-creature inside me:
What is this river you want to cross?
There are no travelers on the river-road, and no road.
Do you see anyone moving about on that bank, or nesting?

There is no river at all, and no boat, and no boatman.
There is no tow rope either, and no one to pull it.
There is no ground, no sky, no time, no bank, no ford!

And there is no body, and no mind!
Do you believe there is some place that will make the
soul less thirsty?
In that great absence you will find nothing.

Be strong then, and enter into your own body;
there you have a solid place for your feet.
Think about it carefully!
Don't go off somewhere else!

Kabir says this: just throw away all thoughts of
imaginary things,
and stand firm in that which you are.
(-Kabir)

It's not what is good or bad. It's what we choose to attend to. This is how the world comes to be what it is.

What gets us into trouble is not what we don't know, it's what we know for sure that just ain't so.
(Mark Twain)

And if it ain't so, say it ain't so.

And if so, say so.

Between word and silence is alert stillness.

Holiness is nothing other than the longing of wholeness to find and be itself.

Fearful of death, I walked in the mountains. 
By meditating on its uncertain hour, 
I conquered the immortal bastion 
Of the immutable. 
Now I am far beyond fearing death. 
- Milarepa

Movement within stillness; stillness within movement.

Alert stillness proceeds from this silence and this word.

Filioque of a Thursday morning.

A woman writes: "...how unlike the words in obits we really are."

I tell her I'd have written as inclusion to Gene's obit the following:

He walked daily, for hours and hours on end. He made people nervous
because of how he looked. He talked of death often, very often, over
the years. When he learned of his cancer the topic of illness and
death became his sole interest.
He worried so much. He was obsessive in his routes and conversation.
He was wary of crowds and physical contact. His mind was seldom at
peace. He was one of us -- we the odd and idiorhythmic.
He'd call a neighbor of his on another street daily. He liked to
talk and keep him appraised of medical matters. The neighbor
listened and suggested, time to time, some action. It was seldom
taken. Only the worry. And the emergency room visits. A long, long,
history of emergency room visits for many, many, years.
Gene walked his routine right up to a week before cancer took his
body. Now, I imagine, his ghost walks the roads of Camden and
Rockport, even in the rain. That's what he did. He walked. A
measured lumbering gate.
He had people who were fond of him. And some who weren't.
Those of us who were fond of Gene will miss him. Not the
compulsions and obsessions, not the graphic medical details or the
reminder how difficult it is to be patient with difficult characters
-- but the Gene in and through and surrounding and embedded within
the being right in front of us. They say the difficulty with being
human is the task of accepting the whole package of our being/human
without the mental scalpel cutting away what we disapprove of in
ourselves and others.
When we cease the playacting of surgical dissection of one another,
we are left with the person-as-a-whole. Such presencing sorely tries
our mettle.
Gene belonged and struggled with his own presentiation -- a word
which means to make something present through transparency.
An unusual man! An unusual presence!
So are we all.
On our way through.

It doesn't matter what we say. What matters is what shows.

Like the torrent that rushes to the sea,
Like the sun and the moon that glide towards
The western mountains,
Like the flight of days and nights,
Hours and seconds,
Human life passes inexorably
- Padmasambhava

There's no reason any more to be afraid. Not of anything.

Let this be included in my obit: He showed up, then left.

Gene dies. I stop in to room 21. Another name on the door. I miss him by 19 hours. 

A stick of incense

carries his memory

into mountain -

disappearance.

Clock ticks. Maher finishes trashing religion. Oatmeal cookies with chocolate are gone. Insanity sometimes wears God as disguise.

As a boy I studied literature,
But was too lazy to become a Confucian;
In my younger days I worked at Zen,
But got no Dharma worth handing down.
Now I've built a grass hut,
Act as custodian of a Shinto shrine,
Half a shrine, half a monk.
- Ryokan

The conflict is between certainty and doubt. It is difficult to deal with both. Of the two, I prefer doubt. It is an unloaded gun.

To what end?
To no end...
This life!

Reading The Haunted Bookshop on porch of cabin -- the corncob smoking Mifflin. From years ago in wood box on porch, Sail Regular from Holland. The Cavendish fills half a bowl, a match, the memory of pipe smoke mixes with afternoon rain. Then, drifts up mountain, back into box for another six years.

Threshold

When in still air and still in summertime
A leaf has had enough of this, it seems
To make up its mind to go; fine as a sage
Its drifting in detachment down the road.
(Poem by Howard Nemerov)

I think God left religion long ago. God returned to the space between word and silence.

No more to say; about to speak. A pleasant stillness bemused by explication.

Remaining as is.

Only this.

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.........

The book by Spanish philosopher Xavier Zubiri rises to the surface in my room after 20 years dialogue with dust.

For Zubiri, intellection and the entire process of intellective knowing is intimately linked to reality:

By virtue of its formal nature, intellection is apprehension of reality in and by itself. This intellection...is in a radical sense an apprehension of the real which has its own characteristics...Intellection is formally direct apprehension of the real—not via representations nor images. It is an immediate apprehension of the real, not founded in inferences, reasoning processes, or anything of that nature. It is a unitary apprehension. The unity of these three moments is what makes what is apprehended to be apprehended in and by itself.

(from, INTRODUCTION TO THE PHILOSOPHY OF XAVIER ZUBIRI (1898-1983), http://www.zubiri.org/intro.htm)

Thomas B. Fowler, President, Xavier Zubiri Foundation of North America, writes in his Informal Introduction to the Philosophy of Xavier Zubiri, the following:

Man's access to God

If traditional metaphysical proofs of the existence of God are out, are there any routes available? Before we answer this question, Zubiri feels that we must do something akin to what we did in the case of our perception of reality: we must step back and reexamine the whole explanatory paradigm and its assumptions. Traditionally, theologians have approached God in a conceptual fashion, in which He is what Zubiri terms a "reality-object" more or less like you and me and rocks and other things of our experience, albeit it of some higher degree. Given this approach, all effort is inexorably concentrated on establishing ways of "demonstrating" God's existence. The main problem with such a paradigm is that it produces proofs which (1) fail to convince because they rely upon abstract metaphysical arguments with premises that are themselves difficult to establish; and (2) the God whose existence they purportedly demonstrate is far removed from the personal God of the Judeo-Christian-Islamic tradition and quite incapable of serving as the basis of a religion.

Zubiri thinks that this whole approach is too anthropomorphic. God is not a "reality-object", but what he terms a "reality-ground"-something to which we must be be "re-ligated", that is, re-connected. (This is much more in line with the approach of mystical thinkers). In contrast to the demonstrative ways of proving God's existence, which are purely idealistic (i.e, based on abstract reasoning), Zubiri proposes the way of religation, ultimately based on our experience of reality. Indeed, for Zubiri we are religated to reality since it imposes itself on us, and does so as something ultimate which both impels us and makes it possible for us to "create", so to speak, our lives. It is the experience of this imposition, of this power of the real, that is the experience of the ground of reality. And it is the fundamental experience which each man possesses whether a theist, an agnostic or an atheist. These latter three diverge with respect to intellectual discernment and volition when they confront this ground.

The theist finds in his experience of the ground an experience of God, a God not transcendent "to" things, but transcendent "in" things. Accordingly, to reach God one need not abandon the world (à la Buddhism), but to enter more into it, so as to reach its ground. This, of course, does not mean to live life in the fast lane, or become a hedonist, but to experience life deeply, in what may be termed the "spiritual" sense: reflection, love of other people and service to them, doing good, and so forth. God is ultimately the ground of things (including persons), and it is in his experience of them that man has the fundamental experience of God. Since man's life is a tapestry woven from his experience with and of things, and since this experience in turn is an experience of God, it follows that each man's life is in some respects a continuous experience of God. What does this mean? That no searching is necessary? That no spiritual life is required? That anyone's God is as good as anyone else's? No; those issues only arise at a subsequent stage, one which would be impossible without this one. What it does mean is that the real God of each person is not a concept or the outcome of some reasoning process, but something much deeper: the very life of man. In making or working out his own life, in configuring his own life, each man configures (or disfigures) God in himself, because the life of man, Zubiri concludes, is always and formally an "experience of God".

For the atheist, the power of the real is still there, and as an intellection, stands in need of some ground. The atheist does two things: he considers the power of the real only as a "fact", suppressing its other dimensions (etymologically 'a-theist' means 'not theist'). In this way he chooses to live a life which is sufficient unto itself; autosufficient, as Zubiri puts it, which means a life that is what it is, and how it is, and nothing else:

…the atheist formally surrenders to his own formal reality as unique and sufficient true personal reality. And it is in this surrender to himself as true that the faith of the atheist consists. The atheist understands himself as surrendered to himself and accepts himself as such. Therefore he makes a choice; atheism is no less a choice than theism.

The salient characteristic of atheism, then, is faith in oneself-or by extension, in a social class, human knowledge, mankind, or another similar surrogate.

This leaves agnosticism. Etymologically, the word means 'not knowing'; but as the experience of the power of the real is always present to the agnostic as well as to the theist and the atheist, its intellection still requires a ground-one which the agnostic searches for diligently but does not find. In Zubiri's own words:

…agnosticism is a frustrated intellective search. It is in this frustration where unknowability and ignorance of God take on their structure, where the suspension of faith occurs. But as ignorance, as unknowability, and as frustration, agnosticism is a strict form of intellective process which rests upon a real moment of reality known intellectively as such.

So the agnostic is someone who recognizes the need to find a ground for his experience of the power of the real, but has not accomplished his goal.
(from, Informal Introduction to the Philosophy of Xavier Zubiri, by Thomas B. Fowler, President, Xavier Zubiri Foundation of North America, http://www.zubiri.org/works/informalintro.htm

When I first studied the philosophical discipline of Metaphysics over forty years ago, there was less I knew then than what I now know I do not know. That "reality" is beyond "being" intrigues.

I listen to a congressional inquiry into the interrogation techniques used by US personnel with detainees. I listen to a supervisor with banking credit cards hold to his position that a written procedure trumps intelligent logic and reasoning. I listen to the mindless bigotry of partison political posturing. I try to hear any laughter well up through the absurdity and darkness of what passes as human discourse and information.

As for sitting in meditation, that is something which must include fits of ecstatic blissful laughter; brayings that will make you slump to the ground clutching your belly, and even after that passes and you struggle to your feet, will make you fall anew in further contortions of sidesplitting mirth.
(- Hakuin)

Tears accompany laughter.

Laughter follows tears.

With sober silence, finally, I wonder about the Buddha, I wonder about the Christ.

And sit.

Wondering.

Tommy says Gene is at his last. I'll stop in at his hospital room in the morning. I'll step into his room. Greet him passing. Then step out. May he be happy, safe, and come to dwell in his true home!

Weary, I yearn for the forest and hills;
Against my will, ten years have I spent
In the world of men.
Burning incense, I take leave of the assembly,
Shunning worldly affairs, I depart.
The mist invites me and
I know that it is time to rest.
Men of little talent are not
Guests fond of mountains.
Men of little virtue do not
Make companions for gathering leaves.
Should someone ask, "When will you come back?"
I would reply, "The white clouds and the green water
Are boundless and serene."
- Jiun (1718-1804)

Dalai Lama's nephew said some words at Amnesty International gathering at Congregational Church this afternoon. He walked from May 10 in Indiana to New York City. He spoke to people. He remembers Tibet. He asks others to remember.

Never forget:
we walk on hell,
gazing at flowers.
(Poem, Never forget, by Kobayashi Issa, 1763 - 1828)

This is flower practice.

In the midst of frustration, anger, and deprivation -- a light shines through.

Tibet goes to the Chinese.

Faith goes to the heart.

The bookmobile was 2300 lbs too heavy for us. We are too small for it. We need a gypsy wagon. We're mendicants.

Listen to me for a second about the effects
Of a certain medicine
The pill I'm talking about is called
Penetrating One's Nature and Becoming a Buddha
Chew it well, chew it well
Won't you take my pill?
- Hakuin (1685-1769)

We watch a favorite film, Julia. It reminds about the ugliness of fascism, the oddness of social privilege, and the attendant dangers of a necessary resistance.

Not here, some say. Not fascism, not resistance. I'm reluctant. The rumblings of some political heavyweights seem to sidle up close to autocratic and dictatorial right wing preference. This country is not immune.

Trinity, on the other hand, reminds us of another vision. Source, expression, and inspiration. Truth is holy. 

The bending and doubleness of lies in slander and distortion becomes the art-form of sneering opportunism. The notion that some sectors in this country insidiously look forward to terrorist attacks so as to justify disgruntled lust for control -- this is the real terror.

What absurd victims of contrary desires we are! If a man is settled in one place he yearns to wander; when he wanders e yearns to have a home. And yet how bestial is content -- all the great things in life are done by discontented people.

There are three ingredients in the good life: learning, earning, and yearning. A man should be learning as he goes; and he should be earning bread for himself and others; and he should be yearning, too: yearning to know the unknowable.
(p.119, an excerpt from Mr Mifflin's notebook full of little jottings, in Parnassus On Wheels, by Christopher Morley, 1917) 

I'd like to learn with truth.

I'd like to earn and share.

I yearn for the liberating completion of our nature with the nature of God and the nature of the cosmos.

We must change our mind. We must change our life.

With

What is.

Real.

A good day in prison is attending your graduation ceremony with an Associate of Arts degree.

It is being in a circle of praise and celebration, recognition and community.

In the autumn of my sixty sixth year,
I've already lived a long time
The intense moonlight
Is bright upon my face.
There's no need to discuss
The principles of koan study;
Just listen carefully to the wind
Outside the pines and cedars.
- Ryonen (1646-1711)

Here's a koan: 'A monk asked Chao-chou, "Has the dog Buddha nature or not?" Chao-chou said, "Mu."'

Here's another: If a man commits a crime and admits his mistake, how much money does a mechanic charge to change a flat?

Don't ask!

Next koan?

Lemon Poppy cake and no substitutes at conversation tonight. Lingering with guest for good words.

Words cannot express things;
Speech does not convey the spirit.
Swayed by words, one is lost;
Blocked by phrases, one is bewildered.
- Mumon

Visit Carpenter's Boatshop. Good people.

There's nothing wrong nor right with being good.

Luckily Rokpa left the chickens alone.

In prison today we read Mary Oliver, Theodore Roethke, Derek Walcott, David Wagoner, and Vaclav Havel. Spirituality, we decide, has to do with what we do with our breath.

Within the waters is the entire world;
There is nothing in its depths
But reflections of mountains and rivers.
A fish breaks the surface
And then disappears again
What need is there to borrow
The wind and thunder?
- Ingen (1592-1673)

Sure it's not easy to break habits and patterns. Instead, let them go whole.

 Be holy in all you do, since it is the Holy One who has called you, and scripture says: Be holy, for I am holy.
(1 Peter 1:15-16)

The powerful stranger is Here.

That's what poets do for us.

That's what poets are for.

Something in the night looks this way.

I look to see what is next. I see what is now -- and this is just fine: cataloguing books, conversations and meditation at hermitage, conversations weekly at the prison, a class on spirituality for the substance abuse lifetime recovery inmates, hospitality times at hermitage. Then there's the question of a bookmobile. I can't help to wonder what is next.

Searching for words, hunting for phrases,
When will it end?
Esteeming knowledge and gathering information,
Only maddens the spirit.
Just entrust yourself to your own nature,
Empty and illuminating
Beyond this, I have nothing to teach.
- Bankei (1622-1693)

I forgot to mention teaching college courses once or twice a year. Nothing but learning.

Tomorrow the woman who teaches violin has surgery. The man who used to walk the roads gets hospice visits. Another, the hiker, looks thinner after his bout with cancer.

A young man cycling Maine's Route 1 will stop and stay a day or two.

We decided to use the Greek word, "monos" -- meaning alone or solitary. We use "hito" -- Japanese for mankind, or, bandit, and Spanish for landmark or milestone. Our designation: "mono" = monastics of no other; "hito" = hermits in the open.

But to what end? How are we being used?

In his Essay on Criticism, Alexander Pope said: "Be not the first by whom the new are tried, nor yet the last to lay the old aside."

The time arrives when the singular is not the isolate, but rather the whole replete with diversity; the solitary is not the recluse, but rather completely isomorphic with the myriad others.

We think there is no other. We think to live in the open is to live alone together. And we think that what we have called God is the inner and outer harmony of everything that seems disconnected -- God is the inner and outer sound and silence from which and through which everything is heard in the stillness of solitude, alone with others.

Because You Asked about the Line Between Prose and Poetry
by Howard Nemerov

Sparrows were feeding in a freezing drizzle
That while you watched turned to pieces of snow
Riding a gradient invisible
From silver aslant to random, white, and slow.

There came a moment that you couldn’t tell.
And then they clearly flew instead of fell.
(From Sentences by Howard Nemerov, published by the University of Chicago Press. Copyright © 1980)

I have never been more alone in my life. A reverberation. Even with others. A participatory reverence.

I no longer know what most people mean when they talk of God. Nor why in the face of evil we remain obtuse and indifferent. Men and women are capable of so much suffering. Sex slave trafficking, slave labor trafficking, money enslavement, remaining slaves to harmful habit.

I look around. Looking for a place to connect with that which is not disconnected. A simple stepping with all my brothers and sisters suffering in this world. To clearly fly instead of being felled upon.  

Toaster bell sounds. Water is poured. Faucet, heating coils, bread, cheese, and Ginger Snaps all practice mindful presence in this kitchen zendo.

June bugs at screen window to right of desk.

What is old and new steps through this room, this mind, meeting here.

A French plane is missing and presumed lost at sea. We mourn their loss.

A man who was a doctor and who performed abortions was assassinated by a man who believed he was killing a mass killer who was doing what is legal in this country. We mourn the loss of life.

It is June.

And I wept. When the sun was down, I went and dug a grave and buried him. My neighbours laughed and said, ‘See! He is not afraid any more.’ (You must remember that a price had been set on my head earlier for this very thing.) ‘The time before this he had to flee, yet here he is, beginning to bury the dead again.’
(--from Tobit 2:1-8)

There is much good that wants to be begun. A new coming of the Holy Spirit would be timely.

We'd have to make and take the time.

Four Kinds of Lilacs
by Leo Dangel

"Why don't you turn at the next corner,"
she said, "and take another road home.
Let's go past that farm with all the
different colored lilacs."

"That's seven miles out of the way,"
he said. "I wanted to plant the rest
of the corn before evening. We
can look at lilacs some other time."

"It'll take only a few minutes"
she said. "You know that lilacs
aren't in bloom for long—if we
don't go now, it will be too late."

"We drove past there last year,"
he said. "They're like any other lilacs
except for the different colors. The rest
of the year, they're all just bushes."

"They're lilac, purple, white, and pink,"
she said. "And today, with no breeze,
the scent will hang in the air—no flowers
smell as good as lilacs in the spring."

"I thought of planting lilacs once,"
he said, "for a windbreak in the grove.
The good smell lasts only a few days.
I suppose we can go, if we hurry."

"Now slow up," she said.
"Last year, you drove by so fast
we couldn't even get a good look.
It wouldn't hurt to take it easy."

"Well, there they are," he said,
"and looking pretty scraggly—past
full bloom already. You should
have thought of doing this sooner."
(Poem, "Four Kinds of Lilacs" by Leo Dangel, from Home from the Field: Collected Poems. Spoon River Poetry Press, 1997.)

The time will come when we will want to allow the spirit of truth though. The time will come when we will want the spirit of love and unity to show itself through our lives.

When that time comes, we'll wonder why we didn't think of doing so sooner.

These things are our natural state -- truth, love, unity, and kindness.

Really, they are.

Then, let them be shown.

We pray for their transparency -- as we pray for the losses of those who barricade with terror or fear the way through.

Pentecost today. What were you expecting? The end of the world as you know it?

Unity.

That's the Holy Spirit.

Unity.

No one left out. No judgment. Radical acceptance and forgiveness.

As if what we hold is held and what we let go is let go. We are the community of beings in this existence deciding who belongs and who doesn't. The Holy Spirit brings something new to the table, namely -- Everyone belongs!.

Light from the moon of clear mind
Drinks up everything in the world.
When mind and light disappear,
What…is…this…?
- Kyong Ho (1849-1912)

A doctor is murdered in church. Canon lawyers talk about pedophilia. Politicians call a Puerto Rican judge nominee a racist. The distraction of professional sports occupies airwaves. Black cat counts bats returning to barn.

Theater. It's all so much theater. We play the play, say the words, pull the trigger, and shout the silly speeches while passing out campaign donation envelopes.

Whitney: You said in one interview that "One way to mark the progress of the poem is that we leave these known coordinates and move off into some terra incognita, a place that is attracting our desire to get disoriented, to get lost." So getting lost but avoiding confusion—is that the game?

Collins: That's a better way to put it than I can think of. Because by clarity I don't mean that we're always in kind of a simple area where everything is clear and comforting and understood. Clarity is certainly a way toward disorientation because if you don't start out—if the reader isn't grounded, if the reader is disoriented in the beginning of the poem, then the reader can't be led astray or disoriented later. So yes, I see the progress typical in some of my poems as starting with something simple and moving into something more demanding.
(--from "A Brisk Walk: Billy Collins in Conversation," by Joel Whitney and Billy Collins, http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/19796)

If this world is a poem, and existence a theater piece, then we want to know a little more about why we should care about the characters, and why those who harm and hurt do their harming and hurting. Who's writing the script?

Someone has to say it plainly.

For us.

To understand.

What...is...this...? That's our question.

Is the wind picking up?

It makes a good story. Suddenly, the wind blows. Who knows from where? Who knows where to?

It comes. It goes. Look and look and look -- ghostly arrival, ghostly departure -- you see nothing.

Some of those it touches in passing, wake up.

All of them look to you
to give them their food when they need it.
You give it to them, and they gather;
you open your hand, they are filled with good things.
But turn away, and they are dismayed;
take away their breath, and they die,
once more they will turn into dust.
You will send forth your breath, they will come to life;
you will renew the face of the earth.
(--from Psalm 104)

The face of the earth is being created.

Take a look.

Do you see your face?

God help you!

There's nothing... now... you can do.

The poet Richard Hugo is right, "We're seldom better than weather."

None of the words have anything to say to him. He's losing his balance. That attracts his attention. He falls. No words stop that. He and his wife know something is happening. It doesn't make them happy.

You should not consider the mind to be that which reflects upon
visual forms, sounds, tastes, and tactile sensations. Many people think
that the mind is simply that which reflects upon what is seen and heard
and is able to distinguish between good, bad, and so forth. Thus they
regard the sixth sense, the intellect, to be the mind. But such views
are just delusive thinking. Before seeing, before feeling, and before
thinking: what is the mind? This alone is what you have to search for
and awaken to.
–Kusan Sunim, translated by Martine Batchelor, from The Way of Korean Zen (Weatherhill)

Sixteen of us sat in circle around wood burning stove this evening.

One dog and one cat makes eighteen.

We are more articulate when in community.

Holy, they say.

Spirit emerges.

Through word.

There's such a desperate desire to rid our world of mistakes. To eliminate disease. End suffering. Right wrongs.

Surely, we think, there's a pill. Or a program. Maybe torture. Or religion.

It is sometimes difficult to see and understand that changing conditions are not mistakes. They feel that way because we sometimes think that if we were only smart enough or careful enough, we could avoid all unpleasantness—that we wouldn’t fall ill or have misfortune. In fact, we usually haven’t done anything wrong. It’s just what happens. The Buddha talked of the eight great vicissitudes of life: pleasure and pain, gain and loss, praise and blame, and fame and disrepute. These changes happen to everyone. It’s just what happens. One of the great laws of the Dharma that I find myself often rediscovering is, “If it’s not one thing, it’s another.”
–Joseph Goldstein, from "One Dharma", (HarperSanFrancisco)

When we come to the end of a story, thank the storyteller. When the film ends, leave your seat. When the meditation bell rings, enter the dharma space. Be silent. Stay present.

The world might never be rid of wrong.

But what's right will be recognized with love.

Do that.

Ryan's paper evokes the thought that no matter what we choose to be or do, we are merely creating our notion of God. God will be what God will be. And we are the creators of what will be for us.

We are in
the process
of what is
being created
as is
God
(--wfh)

These days of sitting through, of moving across this place, are the stuff of transition.

In prison, fear is norm. Mistrust is the only constant. How, when, and why to even consider trust is cloaked in wariness.

I don't go out to wander around
I stay at home here in Miura
While time flows on through
The unbounded world
In the awakened eye
Mountains and rivers completely
Disappear.
The eye of delusion looks out upon
Deep fog and clouds.
- Muso Soseki (1275-1351)

I read final papers slowly. It's not like regular end of semester grading. These papers reveal a more profound search and hide, reveal and watch cautiously the reply. Some of these men have another 10, 20, 30, 40 years behind prison walls. More than a grade is at issue here. So I read slowly and with care the words and thoughts and experiences they share.

A Tendency To Shine
by Adyashanti

If you prefer smoke over fire
then get up now and leave.
For I do not intend to perfume
your mind's clothing
with more sooty knowledge.

No, I have something else in mind.
Today I hold a flame in my left hand
and a sword in my right.
There will be no damage control today.

For God is in a mood
to plunder your riches and
fling you nakedly
into such breathtaking poverty
that all that will be left of you
will be a tendency to shine.

So don't just sit around this flame
choking on your mind.
For this is no campfire song
to mindlessly mantra yourself to sleep with.

Jump now into the space
between thoughts
and exit this dream
before I burn the damn place down.
(--Poem, A Tendency To Shine, by Adyashanti, b.1962-)

Sometimes in their papers there's more than I'd want to know; sometimes more I'd like to know. Mostly it is the Heideggerian revealing and concealing function of the same phrase in the same sentence. Language might speak, but words conceal as much as they reveal.

There's a way of praying that does not use words. Only ears. Only eyes.

This is my prayer with these my fellow learners.

We arrive at Mountain Street as the Lincolnville Town Band on flatbed truck played passing us. The Memorial Day parade was arriving at its end.

I think of sandlot schoolyard boyhood friend Vinnie today as Taps played at Mountain View Cemetery. He died in Vietnam in 1968. We cannot escape from the truth of impermanence.

We visit Tommy. He says Gene is doing poorly. We see Sam and Susan at Camden town landing as they install cleat beside ramp near new restaurant on wharf.

In Rockport we tie new seat to frame of ceder strip canoe at harbor. We'd come back from walking far side of harbor with Rokie. We are grateful for being alive in Maine by the water this beautiful day. We paddle into the swirling wind hugging the coast in gusting embrace.

Ananda wept saying he was only a beginner as the Buddha was dying. Separation is the law of life. "Keep trying," the Buddha said to Ananda.

We come back to the hermitage. Someone had been here and left us cut apple tree branches. We don't need a special teacher. We're given everything that we need. Joan Halifax is telling the story of the Buddha's death. I'm listening.

So many die in war. Some of these wars are waged in the quiet fields of our human hearts. So many die away from home. So many think it is not the right time to die. Still, everyone dies. Everybody is somebody. In my myth I am nobody. This myth is right and not right at the same time. In Buddhist emptiness I am part of the inseparate whole. (These are not Joan's words. They're the wind blowing through this hermitage window.) Rather, Roshi Joan Halifax reads a Milosz poem:

Late Ripeness

by Czeslaw Milosz

Not soon, as late as the approach of my ninetieth year,
I felt a door opening in me and I entered
the clarity of early morning.

One after another my former lives were departing,
Like ships, together with their sorrow.

And the countries, cities, gardens, the bays of seas
assigned to my brush came closer,
ready now to be described better than they were before.

I was not separated from people,
grief and pity joined us.
We forget -- I kept saying -- that we are all children of
the King.

For where we come from there is no division
Into Yes and No, into is, was, and it will be.

We were miserable, we used no more than a hundredth part
of the gift we received for our long journey.

Moments from yesterday and from centuries ago --
a sword blow, the painting of eyelashes before a mirror
of polished metal, a lethal musket shot, a caravel
staving its hull against a reef -- they dwell in us,
waiting for a fulfillment.

I knew, always, that I would be a worker in the vineyard,
as are all men and women living at the same time,
whether they are aware of it or not.

The earth is quiet underfoot. Ragged Mountain takes sun behind her to the west. So many birds!

In the silence, the wind. Gusts of sound. The gate is closed. The dog is safe from the speeding cars coming down long mountain pass from Hope.

When his young daughter died, the Japanese poet Kobayashi Issa (1763-1828) wrote the following poem:

Tsuyu no yo wa tsuyu no yo nagara sari nagara

The world of dew --

A world of dew it is indeed,

And yet, and yet . . .

Remembering those dead and deadened, today by war...each of us on one of these days.

We grieve.

Some tears.

One by one disappearing.

And yet...

Until we are able to update our primary website, here's the Hermitage Update and Events at Meetingbrook placed on Google site: 

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How can you see what is not there?

No one has ever seen God;
but as long as we love one another
God will live in us
and his love will be complete in us.
(--from 1John 4:11-16)

Be here.

God is not there.

God is where you are.

With God, nobody knows what they are talking about.

Be with God.

Dale and David in Protective Custody think it might better read:

From Thee
through me
to we

or:

Through Thee
from me
to we

This is the cost and benefit of community. Theology demands communal kerygma. Dale says it was the crucifixion that rivets Christianity. I suspect the suffering, death, resurrection, ascension, and coming of the Spirit are of a piece -- one event that we apportion to particular distinctive multi-events so as to allow the mind a contemplative sequence. And yet, if the sequencing were true, these 10 days between Ascension and Pentecost are the bereft days. Jesus is gone. There remains only the experience and the teachings -- but no insight, no inspiration, no awakened mind and heart of those left bereft.

If you wish to bring the two matters of birth and death to conclusion, and pass directly beyond the Triple-world, you must penetrate the koan “This very mind is Buddha." Tell me: What is its principle? How is it that this very mind is Buddha? And "this very mind" just what is it like? Investigate it coming. Investigate it going. Investigate it thoroughly and exhaustively. All you have to do is keep this koan constantly in your thoughts.
- Daito (1282-1334)

The "triple world" (triloka) is a common Buddhist term for "universe." The three worlds are "the world of desire"--(kâmaloka), "the world of bodily form" (rûpaloka), and "the immaterial world" (arûpaloka).
(--from Sermons of a Buddhist Abbot, [Zen For Americans], by Soyen Shaku, translated by Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki, 1906)

A variant might read: "This very mind is Christ." This, then, is a time of investigation. What happened? Who was he? What am I?

Not until I exhaust myself investigating do I let go, bereaving and bereft, into what is wholly-there beyond me. "From me."

That which is Wholly-there is the complete-Reality, which we have named "I Am Here and There, Where and When." This Holistic Inseparability, nicknamed "God", is what we must pass through, is what we are passing through, once we let go of our fragmented separative notion of small, isolated, disconnected self. "Through Thee."

This penetrative, permeative presencing of each in each, all in each, and each in all -- this integrative investigation and indwelling incarnative awakening -- this descent/ascent of the Spirit of Wholeness/Holiness -- is our arrival at the costly beneficial advent of community. Of sangha. Of church. Of circle. Of who and what we truly are --One/Another. No other.

Each as each. Each as all. All as each. All as all.

"To we."

Dale and David and Saskia and I, in that prison pod yesterday morning, investigating this mind beyond the triple worlds, enter a moment of peace.

We read Wendell Berry:

THE PEACE OF WILD THINGS

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
(— Poem by Wendell Berry)

We remember times canoeing rivers in turns that become still waters.

We remember these times. Their quiet. Their peace. Their grace. 

An ascension to what we are.

To what each "I Am" is.

We.

Alone/Together.

Free.

"In your compassion," the psalm says, "blot out my offenses."

There's something new occurring. Christ, the essence of creation, has entered, sown through life and death, and ascending (as, with, and through) us, crosses the bridge from time to eternity, there to dwell in proleptic prescient presence with who we really are in the Eternal Now as we, until and always, dwell in this open wholeness with him, them, one another, we, ourselves, no other.

Ascension Friday

From me
Through Thee
To we
(--wfh)

Birds with early light sing this song. Horse from Draper's stable neighs in affirmation. Cars down Barnestown Road pass east to where water rises and falls in dawning dance.

Nobody in sight on the empty mountain
but human voices are heard far off.
Low sun slips deep in the forest
and lights the green hanging moss.
- Wang Wei (699-759)

It is Friday morning. Off to prison.

Warm coffee, a continuation, retasting last evening's conversation.

This weekend we remember all those dead and deadened by war.

Delia Mae walked sidewalk of Court Street with vases of flowers in both hands. Her flowered skirt. Her processional gate for Ascension Thursday. With quintessential devotion she stops to join three hermits in front of St Francis Church in Belfast Maine. They collate and converse about the day, the hard winter, their tiredness, and the feast.

She reads from book taken from shoulder bag. She said the Bodhisattva returned from the Radiant Realm and from mid-air said:

"With conscious, with unconscious, too,

Dwell, sorrow. Either ill eschew.

Pure bliss, from all corruption free

Springs but from Insight's ecstasy."

(from As The Sun Moves Northward, by Mabel Collins)

As quilters arrive and pass them by, the glow of sprig-green sunshines through trees astride shifting feet. What grounded witnesses they were! What did they see? Were they finished with looking up? Is there a new spirituality of shy hermits encircling the scurrying ants near curb?

In becoming a person of merit,
Though you perform no lofty deeds
If you are able to shake off worldly mindedness,
You will become one of the
Renowned for that alone.
In pursuing studies,
Though you make no increase in ingenuity,
If you are able to decrease
The externals that afflict the heart,
You will cross over to the land
Of the sages for that alone. - Hung Ying-ming

If God became human so that humanity become divine, why the fear? If Jesus died, rose, and ascended into the divine realm of not-other, why will we not follow? If the Spirit of Holiness permeates and inspires all who would be open to this new reality, why remain in hiding citing fears one by one?

As he said this he was lifted up while they looked on, and a cloud took him from their sight. They were still staring into the sky when suddenly two men in white were standing near them and they said, ‘Why are you men from Galilee standing here looking into the sky? Jesus who has been taken up from you into heaven, this same Jesus will come back in the same way as you have seen him go there.’
(from Acts 1:1-11)

(See that last enumeration: Acts one, one - oneone).

In prison yesterday, on the writing board: "If I am here, where are you?"

We decide we are peripatetic itinerant mendicants stopping on a sidewalk speaking of Ascension and looking at and through one another.

The weaving hermit heads back to her yurt. The processional hermit continues her pilgrimage. The hermits from Ragged/Bald wandering in the open drive off to hug Kristen at Chases Daily who serves them coffee and tea, and selects the muffins for their boatyard consumption.

It is a solemn day with solemn acts -- each one of us.

The Ascension says: I am here, you are here! There is a new here and a new we.

No mere heaven and earth, no mere human and divine, no mere nature and spirit, no mere mind and matter.

No.

Merely us. Only we here -- with no exception, no exclusion, no excuse.

No wonder the Ascension is such a small, unnoticed, yet glorious feast!

We are gathered.

"We" gathers.

Where are we not?

Candle blown out. Compline ends.

Cut in thirds, split in half,
How can truth be expressed?
Can one see beyond white clouds
With the naked eye?
The monks still have not come
Back from Mt. Kukkuapada.
The leaves of the sutra
Merely stir a sad wind.
- Daito (1282-1334)

Bell sounds three times.

Truth itself.

Retires.

Brandon chose not to answer question four. It asked that the student develop his own theory of aesthetics. He did however tell me what it would have been. "Awareness."

Mountain home sleeping
No dreams of dust.
Three robes are plenty;
Who says I'm poor?
One for my pillow,
One to serve as a mat,
And at the thunder of my snoring
Heaven and Earth disappear.
- Gensei (1623-1668)

No awareness, no beauty.

With awareness, everything is beautiful. Even the ugly. Even the truth.

In prison, Peter said, everyone is a scared little boy.

Eight more conferences tomorrow.

On another matter, I sent the following to the Beloit Poetry Journal family at the death of Marion Stocking:

Final Submission
"She had a strong desire to get back to the woods," Fred Stocking said.

She took
no words
with her

where
we watch
this breath

only
parsing passing
silence

I'm aware how a poet dies.

Moving rocks with handcart around new garden sitting area between barn and kitchen. The small attempt to fashion a little place for intimacy. Words are shared. We carry each other by listening.

O Lord of Love, may I enter into you, And may you reveal yourself unto me, The pure One masquerading as many. You are the refuge of all devotees. I am your devotee. Make me your own.
--Taittiriya Upanishad

I write Governor of Utah named to be Ambassador to China asking him to do his best to help China release its stronghold on Tibet.

If how we are to one another is measure of our spiritual maturity, there is much in this world to pray for.

Here's my plan: Today I will pray for everyone who needs strength and courage to be the true person without and within. Tomorrow I'll pray for all those who are already true and loving and needing no prayer.

The next day, I will rest.

I wonder what will need to be done the fourth day!

Make me your own!

Until we are able to update our primary website, here's the Hermitage Update and Events at Meetingbrook placed on Google site: 

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The way you feel is your meditation. Shitty feeling, shitty meditation. Joyful feeling, joyful meditation. Nothing other than what is there -- is our meditation.

Nature isn’t dualistic. It isn’t merely a collection of separate parts. It doesn’t throw anything away. It recycles everything. And it doesn’t operate out of a desire to improve things. While we fixate on the parts, nature acts out of the Whole.

We need to start recognizing that the world itself is not dualistic. We need to appreciate that our dualistic thinking doesn’t match Reality and that we pay a heavy and painful price for this discrepancy. Only then can we learn to live on this Earth without making a mess of it.

It’s not that we have to keep our hands off everything. We can’t do that, anyway; after all, we’re part and parcel of it. But we can learn to act in accord with Reality.
–Steve Hagen, from Buddhism: It’s Not What You Think (HarperSanFrancisco)

Everyone and everything is welcome at table and welcome on the cushion.

Working with what is there. Working through what is there.

It was nice to begin Sunday Hospitality at hermitage.

And the dogs somehow missed the cars in their crazed run at neighbor's dog at end of dooryard across road as gate was being worked on.

Some kindness revealed itself.

It is maddening that Sudan and Darfur continue to insult human decency. It is obscene that the former administration of the United States felt comfortable torturing other human beings to cover what appears certain to be their lies about starting an elective war. It is discouraging that our banks and credit card companies think that to trick and trap people in a scheme to punish and steal money from them is what America and capitalism do best.

Mountain home walking,
You don't step on dust,
Seldom meet anyone;
Who's ashamed to be poor?
Tired? Then rest.
What do you need a mat for?
Forget about the form
And the shadow will disappear.
- Gensei (1623-1668)

I call for a complete investigation of Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and their cohorts' conduct in creating cruel and unnecessary suffering and death. I call for a worldwide outcry and desisting of the carnage and genocide in African countries. I call for a dismantling of an unkind and devious financial system that chokes people for their money.

If you belonged to the world,
the world would love you as its own;
but because you do not belong to the world,
because my choice withdrew you from the world,
therefore the world hates you.
(--from John 15: 18-21)

The mountain calls -- come away. The solitude of sorrow for the ways we are with one another is too deep for tears. Cruelty and cynicism towards the people of this existence is far beyond comprehension.

I stop.

Say.

No.

More.

Yes?

Until we update our primary website, here's the update placed on Google: 

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In the film the lead character in voiceover says that each time you look at the future it changes. The same can be said of the past. It's a mystery why we don't look more often.

The lone tip of Wonder Peak is
Beyond any climber's reach.
One can only see white clouds
Drifting this way and that.
Thick pine and cypress forests
How old could they be?
Still, in rare moments birds
Along the steep cliffs sing.
- Daito (1282-1334)

What happens, happens. Just like that. Fact.

But what we tell about what happens, the story we create, narrate, and hold as gospel truth -- that is the myth mind fashions.

Can we live without story? That's not the question. The question is whether we see that the story we tell is just the story we tell.

To see story as story is not to confuse reality with what is said about it.

There's joy in story. There's sadness too. So -- we laugh, and we cry. It's the human way of being.

Also human is to be what is taking place without adding or subtracting anything.

Rare the moment!

I've been thinking about former Vice President Richard Cheney.

Not much.

Green mountains have turned yellow
So many times the troubles
And worries of the world of things
No longer bother me.
One grain of dust in the eye
Will render the Three Worlds
Too small to see
When the mind is still
The floor where I sit
Is endless space.
- Muso Soseki (1275-1351)

He readies the country for another attack.

Knows exactly where to put the blame.

Suffering will be apportioned fairly.

He will be the one shining light in the darkness.

There's much to sorrow. He's one.

I see what he says.

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens.
(Poem by William Carlos Williams, sometimes entitled The Red Wheelbarrow)

Why 'sometimes?'

It depends.

No need to worry.

Whatever happens, all is and will be alright.

Simmering Tea on Mount Hui

In an earthen jar at break of day
I dip clean cold water,
Shift it to the stone kettle,
Boil it on a broken slab.
Pine winds from ten thousand peaks
I offer in one sip,
Then gather my sleeves together,
Walk by the waterside.
- Chieh-shih Chih-p’eng (13th c)

Silence is the only teacher.

Not not speaking.

But silence.

Off to visit and pick up Saskia's mom for return trip to Maine. Cody, her new sweet German Shepherd, will visit hermitage for first time. Back Tuesday.

It has been lovely being home and working the place this past week. Aside from an exhaustion that will not quit, all is well.

To love is to mother

To love is

Being

True nature
(--Saskia, in Cabin Words, Welcome book in chapel zendo 10May09)

It is time for the revelation of earth. Rebirth. Resurrection. New beginnings. Anyone interested in using the meditation cabin for quiet presencing -- it is ready!

We have no choice but to start where we are...

We each have no choice but to start where we are with what we have.
This is our challenge, our life, our practice. Each obstacle, problem,
handicap is part of the practice. Every advantage, every success helps
to clarify our practice.
–Marc Lesser, from Z.B.A.: Zen of Business Administration (New World Library)

Wind blows. Sun slants. Storm clouds drift beyond Hosmer Pond.

To my mother.

To all my mothers.

I greet you with this new earth!

This place for the learning and practice of presence.

May itself!

Nobody is losing faith.

They've just stopped looking where others have told them to look.

On this frosty day, clouds and mist congeal,
On the mountain moon, the icy chill grows.
At night I receive a letter from my home,
At dawn I leave without anyone knowing.
- Fahai

I've been thinking about leaviing.

Without anybody.

Knowing.

Why.

We watch Jerome Bixby's The Man from Earth for Friday Evening Conversation. We are confronted with the possibility that much we believe is clothing easily discardable. Real faith is the direct experience of the individual. It doesn't matter what we think, nor what we believe.

Faith is an experience of the individual. The individual is that which is undivided.

Rain clears from the distant peaks
Dew glistens frostily.
Moonlight glazes the front of
My ivied hut among the pines.
How can I tell you how I am,
Right now?
A swollen brook gushes in the valley
Darkened by clouds.
- Daito (1282-1334)

These days we are tired.

We are here.

And tired.

In prison this morning we spoke about torture. Torture is a betrayal of language, language meant to actually convey the dignity of wholeness through expressive word. Torture is primarily a lie. It is a lie that asks for and receives lies in return.

It is so good to see the sun!

Rainy silence.

Rosy Breasted Grosbeak makes first appearance at feeder.

Subject and object from the start
Are no different,
The myriad things nothing
But images in the mirror.
Bright and resplendent,
Transcending both guest and host,
Complete and realized,
All is permeated by the absolute.
A single form encompasses
The multitude of dharmas,
All of which are interconnected
Within the net of Indra.
Layer after layer there is no
Point at which it all ends,
Whether in motion or still,
All is fully interpenetrating.
- Zhitong (d.1124)

Final class of Mythology last evening at University College at Rockland. Campbell spoke of Indra's Net with suggestion that each reflecting each posits no blame. Everything arises and occurs as it does. Everything dissolves and vanishes as it is. Who is there to take the blame for what has gone awry? Who is there to take credit for what is going fine?

Each raindrop falls from clouds in sky upon the earth beneath. A little dance of arrival at mud puddle. White dog stretches then returns to stillness on daybed.

I rearrange altar in front room. Between statue of seated Buddha and cross suspending Jesus is section of split firewood with empty knothole in middle. A space perfect in emptiness. For all three. In betweenness. Circularity seeing through. A morning's meditation!

For now, the serenade of silence soothes as rain on roof and skylight -- as glorious as any chant in any monastery in any part of the world.

For this sound, deep appreciation.

Twenty five years ago today Saskia and I first lay eyes on one another. In Portland. On Exchange Street. The beginning of 15.5 hours of Rainer Werner Fassbinder's film Berlin Alexanderplatz over 5 nights.

I don't remember if it is raining that first viewing.

“To listen to this, and to meditate on it, will be of benefit to many who, like Franz Biberkopf, live in a human skin, and, like this Franz Biberkopf, ask more of life than a piece of bread and butter.” ( —Alfred Döblin, from the preface to his novel Berlin Alexanderplatz)

Yesterday Saskia accompanies me to penultimate college class on Aesthetics for the college program at Maine State Prison. We watch Rouge (Red) by Krzysztof Kieslowski, the 3rd film in his trilogy Three Colors. Tomorrow we'll return for regular Friday Morning Meetingbrook Conversations at the prison.

Here in the beginning, Franz Biberkopf leaves Tegel Prison into which a former foolish life had led him. It is difficult to gain a foothold in Berlin again, but he finally does. This makes him happy, and now he vows to lead a decent life.
(--Opening words, First Book, Berlin Alexanderplatz, by Alfred Döblin)

In prison classroom, Greg, one of the inmates, offers and brings Saskia a cup of water.

In the final scene of film, the man whose life seems to be undergoing a quiet, joyous renaissance, looks out his window as if at his life retrouver, finding something lost, his life again.

From curious beginnings, curious continuation.

Penses-tu? (You think?)

Je pense que oui! (I think so.)

Alors allons-y! (So let's go!)

They're called parallel universes.

With compassionate hands Buddha and
Bodhisattvas constantly save those who are lost. 
Is there anything better than to stay
At the foot of this misty cliff
Watching in meditation 
The calm clouds on their way home to the cave?
- Muso Soseki (1275-1351)

When I get back, I'll say more.

First Tuesday Evening Practice at hermitage. Sitting on cushion. Then beginning of Emptiness, A Study in Religious Meaning, on Nagarjuna, by Frederick J. Streng. With green tea. Then walk to pond.

The fine mist of dusk precipitation.

Digesting Mindfulness
Cultivating mindfulness is not unlike the process of eating. It would be absurd to propose that someone else eat for you. And when you go to a restaurant, you don’t eat the menu, mistaking it for the meal, nor are you nourished by listening to the waiter describe the food. You have to actually eat the food for it to nourish you. In the same way, you have to actually practice mindfulness in order to reap its benefits and come to understand why it is so valuable.
–John Kabat-Zinn, from Letting Everything Become Your Teacher

We actually practice because we actually have to practice.

Twenty eight years ago today Katherine died. I bow to her. Light incense. Light candle.

What time has gone by in eternity?

None.

None at all.

Hence we practice.

Hence we pray.

What would it be like to live Christ life and Zen life without doubt or disagreeableness? I'm uncertain. And it seems a silly idea. That's why I ask the question.

The teaching of the mind ground
Is the basis of Zen study.
The mind ground is the
Great awareness of being as is.
- Fayan

There's a bookmobile in Illinois that would make an unusual bookshop and bakery. The lobby officer at the prison thinks we should get it and name it "The Road Taken." He likes poetry.

Finding Happiness Outside the Box

Our notions about happiness entrap us. We forget that they are just ideas. Our idea of happiness can prevent us from actually being happy. We fail to see the opportunity for joy that is right in front of us when we are caught in a belief that happiness should take a particular form.
–Thich Nhat Hanh, from Teachings on Love, Parallax Press

Right now, I'm happy.

We'll stay with this for a while.

I'd be pleased to say the same phrase again and again if I had to.

Right now.

I am.

Happy.

Living Christ life, Zen life.

Of course we can change the past. It's right here. Quietly watch the mind. Accept, forgive, compassionately -- there. These acts of wisdom are the appearing aspects of understanding which is beyond being seen.

I explain to you matters
Pertaining to enlightenment,
But don't try to keep
Your mind on them.
Just turn to the ocean
Of your own essence
And develop practical accord with its nature.
- Yangshan

Beyond being seen is a very rare event. It changes everything.

Standing in the in-between of religions offers us today a most fruitful form of spirituality. One theologian talks of 'passing over' and coming back. Passing over, pascha, into another religious tradition and spirituality and then coming back to one's own, transformed and reformed. In passing over mind and heart into another one, one dies to one's own particular, self-enclosed religion; in coming back, one is born in spirit and truth. When we are identified totally with one religion, we lose our souls. Passing over and coming back, or better standing in-between, the spirit becomes freed and we come into our goodness and compassionate humanity. Standing in-between, the self stands nowhere and yet embraces all. The self is open to the infinite, yet its home is in the particular and the concrete, in the Here and the Now. It has no boundaries and no limits, yet it is through the door of the ethical life that it comes into life and reality.               (Zen Christ: A Monastic Teisho, From Zen Heart, Zen Mind: The Teachings of Zen Master AMA Samy , 2002 Cre-A Thiruvanmiyum India, If Not Now, When)

Dean said to leave is not to quit. It's stepping outside to get perspective. 

Carol liked Hillel:

If you are not friends with yourself,
Who will be?
If you are only that, what are you?
If not now, when?

Saskia liked the betweening.

Jory quoted Hafiz about throwing sticks at the soft part of yourself is throwing sticks at God.

Go on, let change come between you and it all.

Where do we live?

We live between one another.

I'm silenced.

There is nothing.

Else.

I can say.