I write to my senators, congress-people, and the president.

I support H.R. 676, the single-payer bill. Please help move our health care away from the pharmaceutical and insurance choke hold. Make health care real and effective for everyone, I appeal to your sense of fairness. Thanks,

I neither understand nor accept the reluctance of the American people to share equally the resources of health care with every one of our brothers and sisters in this country.

We can do better.

We will.

When the great Chinese Zen master Ta-mei was dying, his students asked him for a final helpful word. "When it comes, don't try to avoid it; when it goes, don't run after it," he said. Just then, a squirrel chattered on the roof. "There is only this, there is nothing else," said Ta-mei, and then he died.
Can we conceive of what this is? Can this be enough for us? Is there another reality more real or more wonderful than this? To know that there is only this is to, as Hui-neng put it, "see the original nature and not become confused."( - Francis Dojun Cook, How to Raise an Ox, Wisdom Publications, Tricycle, daily Dharma)

Today, God is the quiet fog through mountain branches.

I breathe this through and through.

Elisha fed the crowd. Jesus fed the crowd. It's a good narrative. The crowds were fed. There's no need to fear.

The more you talk and think about it,
The further astray you
Wander from the truth.
Stop talking and thinking,
And there is nothing you
Will not be able to know.
To return to the root
Is to find the meaning,
But to pursue appearances
Is to miss the source.
At the moment of inner enlightenment
There is a going beyond
Appearance and emptiness.
- Seng Ts'an (d. 606)

Going beyond is surrendering fear.

25. But the man who looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues to do this, not forgetting what he has heard, but doing it—he will be blessed in what he does.
(--from Letter of James)

We have heard, in silence, at night, going into dooryard with dog and cat, the light from one of a billion stars through tree branches.

maggie and milly and molly and may
by E. E. Cummings

maggie and milly and molly and may
went down to the beach(to play one day)

and maggie discovered a shell that sang
so sweetly she couldn't remember her troubles,and

milly befriended a stranded star
whose rays five languid fingers were;

and molly was chased by a horrible thing
which raced sideways while blowing bubbles:and

may came home with a smooth round stone
as small as a world and as large as alone.

For whatever we lose(like a you or a me)
it's always ourselves we find in the sea

A necessary loss.

A surprising find.

We are fed up with metaphor.

It is time to fast.

An emptying God.

War continues to rage.

It's not enough to complain about the weather.

Stop it! (War, that is.)

Translating Sutras

We go on unwinding the woof
From the web of their meaning.
Words of the Sutras
Day by day leap forth.
Head-on we've chased the miracle
Of Dharma:
Here are no mere scholars
- Hui Yung (332- 414)

Prison today was three good conversations. About galaxies and gravity. About three chairs in a pod that foment gossip and negativity. About God and laziness.

Perhaps sitting meditation is akin to falling into a wormhole taking you everyplace at once.

Evening conversation begins Practicing the Power of Now. Refresher. "No-mind is consciousness without thought." That's what Tolle writes.

Good words! No mere!

No-name suffices.

As the moon slips from
Behind a cloud and shines,
So the master comes out
From behind ignorance and shines.
Swans rise and fly toward the sun.
What magic!
So do the pure conquer
The armies of illusion
And rise to fly.
- Buddha in the Dhammapada

No wonder we do not experience God.

With wonder, experience.

Unfortunately, we use names as crowbars prying apart the once whole.

This is called naming violence.

...Rwandan musician Jean Paul Samputo says: "Forgiveness is the most powerful unpopular weapon against violence that exists." (--in Christian Science Monitor, July 26, 2009, p.7)

Wander nameless with no-name truth, with no-name God.

The nameless whole is, in itself, sufficient.

What would you want to hear if you were dying?

"Thank you for your life!"

Little Pines
Poking up from the ground
Barely above my knees,
Already there's holiness
In their coiled roots.
Though harsh frost has
Whitened the hundred grasses,
Deep in the courtyard,
One grove of green!
In the late night
Long-legged spiders stir;
Crickets are calling
From the empty stairs.
A thousand years from now
Who will stroll among these trees,
Fashioning poems on their
Ancient dragon shapes?
- Ch'I chi (864-937)

The president wants a better approach to health care in the United States. We should have a fair and accessible system for all people.

Woman, why are you weeping? Whom do you seek? She is asked why she is sorrowing so that her desire might be strengthened; for when she mentions whom she is seeking, her love is kindled all the more ardently.
Jesus says to her: Mary. Jesus is not recognised when he calls her “woman”; so he calls her by name, as though he were saying: Recognise me as I recognise you; for I do not know you as I know others; I know you as yourself.
(--From a homily on the Gospels by Gregory the Great, pope; Office of Readings, feast of Mary Magdalene)

To be known as oneself is a good place to start.

To be recognized.

Enough for life.

Good for death.

Perfect for what is beyond both.

Cutting limbs of trees. Dragging branches up to pit. Others prepare boat for launching.

When water is pure and sparkling clear,
Your see straight to the bottom
When your mind holds no concern,
No circumstance can turn you
And once your mind doesn't stray,
A kalpa has no changes.
From such awareness nothing hides.

- Han shan

When there's nothing to say, I try my best to keep silent.

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What is the better way to live?

As it is, it happens this 'what is' is the better way to live.

No doubt about it. Just don't-know 'what is' and continue on allowing it to live through you. Every instant giving birth to 'what is' taking place before us.

Do not pursue the past.
Do not lose yourself in the future.
The past no longer is.
The future has not yet come.
Looking deeply at life as it is
In the very here and now,
The practitioner dwells
In stability and freedom.
We must be diligent today.
To wait until tomorrow is too late.
Death comes unexpectedly.
How can we bargain with it?
The sage calls a person who knows
How to dwell in mindfulness
Night and day
"One who knows the better way to live."
- Bhaddekaratta Sutra

There were 14-15 at Sunday hospitality today. Grass mowed. Earlier at Jack and Kathy's a potluck of paragraphs from 15 around their table centered on The Course in Miracles. It was Lorin's and Jack's birthday. At hermitage later, Rick, also his birthday, stopped in.

Everything is being born even as we write and read these words. The wind courses through the land, through our words, through the night. As we sat in meditation in the cabin an enormous porcupine came up to the screen porch and caught our attention. Rokpa first, then the humans. It ambled on as we resettled back to our cushions.

Thomas Berry, in The Dream of the Earth, has said that most of us suffer from a kind of autism when it comes to communicating with anything other than our own kind. The Holy Wind has been stilled in our lives , and we live in a cultural atmosphere that does not confirm the mutuality of creation. Even when we recognize our kinship and intimacy with other forms of existence, we remain mute before them. Their language has been forgotten. We are enclosed in a psychocultural cocoon; the outer world no longer flows into our being. Those voices remain unheard, and we are unable to speak in response. The winds of communication with creation are dying. Yet Earth and language meet and metabolize in the zones of dream and visions, in story, poetry, song, and prayer, and in direct communication with untamed beings. These zones comprise the boundary lands where cultural constraints and social habits are overridden, where tribal folk, shamans, and children, the mad and inspired, are caught in the holy wind of creation.
(-- Joan Halifax, p.84, in her book The Fruitful Darkness, 1993)

Here is what I have to say. If I were to think about it, 'here' is the only thing I have to say.

The better way to live is transparently.

Walter Cronkite's signature sign-off, "And that's the way it is!" reminds us to face the way things are.

The way things are is what is taking place before us.

The holy wind of creation.

Sounding itself throughout.

Requesting our attention.

Tom, at mindfulness table of Saturday Morning Practice, says: "I am the entirety of the Holy Spirit."

Entirety. Then he added: "But I don't understand how it all works.

The humble admission of what he is; the unknowing continuance in a perplexing world.

Movement and stillness:
Both are part of the same principle,
Emotions of this dusty world
Are not as important as the Way,
So I endure this thin paper robe
Until the dawn bell,
While pomegranate leaves and mulberry
Branches dance in the north wind.
- Tesshu Tokusai (d.1366)

The paper thin robe is the sinuous fragility of the near-nothingness between discernible reality and irretrievable experience. Like a governmental black-op wherein chilling power toys with every opposing interest with lethal removal, the fabric of thin existence is no match for the powers vying for domination and those angling for redemption.

Linda sends words of Derrick Jensen:

Part of the problem is that we’ve been victims of a campaign of systematic misdirection. Consumer culture and the capitalist mindset have taught us to substitute acts of personal consumption (or enlightenment) for organized political resistance. An Inconvenient Truth helped raise consciousness about global warming. But did you notice that all of the solutions presented had to do with personal consumption—changing light bulbs, inflating tires, driving half as much—and had nothing to do with shifting power away from corporations, or stopping the growth economy that is destroying the planet? Even if every person in the United States did everything the movie suggested, U.S. carbon emissions would fall by only 22 percent. Scientific consensus is that emissions must be reduced by at least 75 percent worldwide.
(--from UPPING THE STAKES, Forget Shorter Showers, Why personal change does not equal political change, BY DERRICK JENSEN, Published in the July/August 2009 issue of Orion magazine)

Something larger is happening. Larger, but still in the empirical realm. We're still on earth here. Let the powers of mythic eternal warfare of good and evil super-beings out of this discussion. Rather, think about the annoying observations of Derrick Jensen:

I want to be clear. I’m not saying we shouldn’t live simply. I live reasonably simply myself, but I don’t pretend that not buying much (or not driving much, or not having kids) is a powerful political act, or that it’s deeply revolutionary. It’s not. Personal change doesn’t equal social change.

So how, then, and especially with all the world at stake, have we come to accept these utterly insufficient responses? I think part of it is that we’re in a double bind. A double bind is where you’re given multiple options, but no matter what option you choose, you lose, and withdrawal is not an option. At this point, it should be pretty easy to recognize that every action involving the industrial economy is destructive (and we shouldn’t pretend that solar photovoltaics, for example, exempt us from this: they still require mining and transportation infrastructures at every point in the production processes; the same can be said for every other so-called green technology). So if we choose option one—if we avidly participate in the industrial economy—we may in the short term think we win because we may accumulate wealth, the marker of “success” in this culture. But we lose, because in doing so we give up our empathy, our animal humanity. And we really lose because industrial civilization is killing the planet, which means everyone loses. If we choose the “alternative” option of living more simply, thus causing less harm, but still not stopping the industrial economy from killing the planet, we may in the short term think we win because we get to feel pure, and we didn’t even have to give up all of our empathy (just enough to justify not stopping the horrors), but once again we really lose because industrial civilization is still killing the planet, which means everyone still loses. The third option, acting decisively to stop the industrial economy, is very scary for a number of reasons, including but not restricted to the fact that we’d lose some of the luxuries (like electricity) to which we’ve grown accustomed, and the fact that those in power might try to kill us if we seriously impede their ability to exploit the world—none of which alters the fact that it’s a better option than a dead planet. Any option is a better option than a dead planet. (Jensen, ibid) http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/4801

The man at table this morning has been thinking of the Holy Spirit. Little by little he has moved from being willing to be willing to invite the Holy Spirit into his life, through seeing that the Holy Spirit is already in his life, then this morning to realizing without understanding that he is the entirety of the Holy Spirit.

The rest of us were close to his ground zero radiating words.

Jensen quotes Kirkpatrick Sale: “The whole individualist what-you-can-do-to-save-the-earth guilt trip is a myth. We, as individuals, are not creating the crises, and we can’t solve them.”

In the scriptures Jeremiah (23:1-6) says that there are leaders and shepherds who do not care. The longing for the rest of us is deep and unnerving, albeit not understood and aphasic. Jeremiah says a day will come, perhaps soon, when we find our voices, where words become action, and the right thing is done, the wrong undone. Jeremiah writes in the final verse:

And this is the name he will be called:
The-Lord-our-integrity.’

Integrity.

Entirety.

We sipped coffee and tea, ate toast and fruit, and felt tears arise.

The bird hit glass door. Sat for over an hour on wood board. When we approached to set it in box for night, it flew away, unsteadily, to branch of tree.

Mountain temple rainy,
Dark and gloomy all day,
Plums still half yellow, half green;
On my lone mat,
Still and quiet,
Deep in meditation,
I don't let birds and blossoms
Into my garden gate.
- Betsugen Enshi (1294–1364)

Life is fragile and eternal. Only forms change. Emptiness remains throughout.

Sitting and chanting with Buddhist group in prison this morning, keeping time with wooden fish.

Nothing taken, nothing left!

The corpus on the cross is not merely Jesus. It is my putting me there, or the ego putting threatening truth up to ridicule and death, or our judging attack on another placed iconically on an instrument of torture.

We have to see through and go through the symbol to the resurrecting release of true Self from illusory self.

The dreary, hopeless thought that you can make attacks on others and escape yourself has nailed you to the cross. Perhaps it seemed to be salvation. Yet it merely stood for the belief the fear of God is real. And what is that but hell? Who could believe his Father is his deadly enemy, separate from him, and waiting to destroy his life and blot him from the universe, without the fear of hell upon his heart?
(--from Lesson 196, ACIM)

Reading about the history of A Course in Miracles, which has been the focus of Thursday Evening Conversations for over two years. Meetingbrook hosted the group in December 2006 led by Jack and Kathy. And still continues here at hermitage. The longer the group reads and listens to the text and one another, the more interesting the synthesis of the work seems to be.

During one such interchange with his friend Judith Skutch Whitson, Whitson describes calling Thetford during a moment of extremely high tension in her relationship with Jampolsky. In the phone conversation Whitson went on at length, describing what she perceived to be Jampolski’s many faults. Thetford listened intently until Whitson finally ran out of breath. He then quietly said, "Judy, the Course (ACIM) can be summed up in the question, 'Are you willing to see your brother sinless?' "
"No!" Whitson screamed.
"Well, dear," Thetford replied, "when you are, you will feel much better." And then he hung up!
(--Anecdotal accounts of Thetford's California life, about William Thetford, from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Thetford worked in a collaborative venture with Dr. Helen Schucman in writing A Course In Miracles, ACIM, and also with its initial edits. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Thetford#cite_ref-4

I'm fog this evening. Fog covers Bald Mountain. Nothing is seen, not anything.

If I were to turn around in this fog would I see anything?

What I've thought was there doesn't seem to be.

Allowing myself to be hung up on.

Disconnected. Not connected. Never separated. As innocent as the day brought into being.

Feeling.

Much.

Better?

Millionaires play baseball at all-star game in St. Louis. They have talent and are paid a lot of money.

Earlier I sat on porch of cabin reading about the Vedas and Upanishads.

Attain the mind of emptiness,
Preserve the utmost quiet:
As myriad things act in concert,
I therefore 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.
- Lao-tzu

At Tuesday Evening Conversation we read article about gossip and precept of right speech. Reticence is not the perfection of right speech. I'm reticent. It seems there's too much talk. I listen to the questions levied at nominee judge Sonia Sotomajor. Too many words tinged with snark. Read the precept!

Words are the creative brushstrokes of breath.

Breathe carefully.

When unkindness or indifference is what you hear, try not to mind.

No explanation stands in the way of kindness and attention.

Watching film, Pan's Labyrinth, (El Laberinto del Fauno, 2006), I am taken by the approximating narrative, the parallel worlds of temporal facticity and mythic fantastical.

Buddha's Satori

For six years sitting alone
Still as a snake
In a stalk of bamboo
With no family but the ice
On the snow mountain.
One night, seeing the empty sky
Fly into pieces, he shook
The morning star awake
And kept it in his eyes.
- Muso Soseki (1275-1351)

Who's to say what purpose or reason there is between what we think we know about our everyday existence and what is invisible to the eye, that which is beyond sensory encounter and conscious comprehension?

‘Anyone who prefers father or mother to me is not worthy of me. Anyone who prefers son or daughter to me is not worthy of me. Anyone who does not take his cross and follow in my footsteps is not worthy of me. Anyone who finds his life will lose it; anyone who loses his life for my sake will find it.
‘Anyone who welcomes you welcomes me; and those who welcome me welcome the one who sent me.
(-- Matt 10:34 - 11:1)

Whoever sees you sees the father or mother. Whomever you see is seen by the mother or father. It is not our choice what we see. It is our choice how we see what is seen.

WHY LOG TRUCK DRIVERS RISE
EARLIER THAN STUDENTS OF ZEN

In the high seat, before dawn dark,
Polished hubs gleam
And the shiny diesel stack
Warms and flutters
Up the Tyler Road grade
To the logging in Poorman creek.
Thirty miles of dust.

There is no other life.
(Poem by Gary Snyder, from Turtle Island, 1974)

He's right. There is no other life. Just this.

And 'this' has ten thousand mothers and fathers.

Siddhartha sees the star. Jesus is seen through.

This is our body. This, our blood.

In this paper, I argue that the thought and behavior involved in drug dependence is associated with a certain pre-theoretic conception of the self that finds philosophical expression as a grossly simplified form of materialism. Addicts tend not to take mentality seriously: They do not understand themselves as minded beings capable of self-awareness and development through intentional action. Recognizing the practical implications of accepting this philosophically unconvincing view, I argue, encourages a modification of self-conception that is instrumental to the process of recovery from addiction. Using a combination of philosophical analysis and close reading of a trio of narratives that describe drug dependence and recovery, I pursue the possibility that rehabilitation may involve the clarification and alteration of self-conception in such a way that emphasizes autonomous agency and certain values that have not yet been embraced by twelve-step programs, namely, integration, apprehension, moderation, and self-discipline. The rich and substantial history of analytic–philosophical thought about the self is of immense practical value to people impacted by drug dependence and/or engaged in recovery from it; philosophy offers us a set of investigative tools, terms, and concepts that may help to map the different cognitive routes to successful self-rehabilitation. A philosophical consideration of the use of self-related words and ideas within the context of narratives of addiction and recovery may bear directly and significantly on the improvement of the lives of those persons who struggle to overcome drug dependence.

(-- Mitchell, Allison about his Taking Mentality Seriously: A Philosophical Inquiry Into the Language of Addiction and Recovery, in Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology - Volume 13, Number 3, September 2006, pp. 211-222, The Johns Hopkins University Press.)

What we make of any 'this' is an approximate narrative.

What do we make of this our nearing story?

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

Practice makes perfect, they say. Don't believe them. Practice does nothing more than place you at the place you are at that moment.

Those who seek liberation for themselves alone cannot become fully enlightened. Though it may be said that one who is not already liberated cannot liberate others the very process of forgetting oneself to help others is itself liberating. Therefore those who seek to benefit themselves alone actually harm themselves by doing so, while those who help others also help themselves by doing so. -- Muso Kokushi (1275-1351)

We practice because there's nothing else to do.

How's it going?

Wording shifts.

Just like meetingbrook! There's a conversation between two points of view.

This is the conversation now.

And,

This is now the conversation.

At Saturday Morning Practice, after sitting, at Lectio, four of us worry the meaning of shaking the dust off your feet as "testimony against" as one translation of the scripture reading. Below is a different translation:

Jesus summoned the Twelve and began to send them out in pairs giving them authority over the unclean spirits. And he instructed them to take nothing for the journey except a staff – no bread, no haversack, no coppers for their purses. They were to wear sandals but, he added, ‘Do not take a spare tunic.’ And he said to them, ‘If you enter a house anywhere, stay there until you leave the district. And if any place does not welcome you and people refuse to listen to you, as you walk away shake off the dust from under your feet as a sign to them.’ So they set off to preach repentance; and they cast out many devils, and anointed many sick people with oil and cured them. (--Mark 6:7-13)

I would translate it: If you are not welcomed or listened to, keep moving, don't let the dust of non-acceptance put you and keep you where you really are not. Be, rather, where you are. Always practice speaking truth as you see it in the moment. Listen to others as they attempt to speak their truth. Welcome the differences if they appear. Remember, we are dealing with mysteries and unknowable realities. Still, try your best to enter more closely to the proximity of what is true. You are not to harm or dismiss anyone's attempt to near truth.

Nevertheless, in the face of hostility or inhospitality, be kind, but make tracks. Don't take with you any hostile or inhospitable attitude. Shake it off. Leave it behind. Let them see that such an attitude need not continue. Be a sign of dropping off that mind and that body. Let go into the wholeness that welcomes everyone and everything, be the belonging that longs to reside in and with all beings. Such dwelling nears our true home.

Coffee and tea cups washed, fried egg and toast eaten, fruit cup and yogurt enjoyed, laughter and conversation about dogs, death, crop-circles, and Shaker boxes and Shaker step-stools -- we adjourn to work on cedar siding, washing bottom of Loon IV, and the sunniness of Saturday morning.

It is the feast of St. Benedict, father of western monasticism. We are grateful for him, his teaching, and example, and the men and women who follow his rule of life.

Since sky and earth are mindless,
They last forever.
What has mind has limits.
A person who has attained
The Path is like this too.
In the midst of no activity,
She carries out her activities,
Accepting all unfavorable
And favorable circumstances
With a compassionate heart.
- Yunmen (864-949)

So it is!

This is the conversation now.

This is now the conversation.

Now this is the conversation.

Oy gevalt!

The sentence arose at Friday Evening Conversation: "This is now the conversation."

If you want to freely live or die, go or stay, to take off or put on your clothes, then right now recognize the one who is listening to my discourse. That one is without form, without characteristics, without root, without source, and without any dwelling place, yet is brisk and very alive. As for all manifold responsive activities, the place where they are carried on is, in fact, no place. Therefore, when you look for that one, it retreats farther and farther, when you seek that, it turns more and more the other way: this is called the "Mystery."
- Lin-chi (d.866)

It's as good a new motto as anything:

This is

now

the conversation.

Everything is happening inside the whole. A wholly spirit.

The Inner History of a Day

No one knew the name of this day;
Born quietly from deepest night,
It hid its face in light,
Demanded nothing for itself,
Opened out to offer each of us
A field of brightness that traveled ahead,
Providing in time, ground to hold our footsteps
And the light of thought to show the way.

The mind of the day draws no attention;
It dwells within the silence with elegance
To create a space for all our words,
Drawing us to listen inward and outward.

We seldom notice how each day is a holy place
Where the eucharist of the ordinary happens,
Transforming our broken fragments
Into an eternal continuity that keeps us.

Somewhere in us a dignity presides
That is more gracious than the smallness
That fuels us with fear and force,
A dignity that trusts the form a day takes.

So at the end of this day, we give thanks
For being betrothed to the unknown
And for the secret work
Through which the mind of the day
And wisdom of the soul become one.
(-- from To Bless the Space Between Us: A Book of Blessings, by John O'Donohue)

Someone tonight said it's all a dream.

I wanted to know what's being left out of the sentence "It's all a dream."

Certainty often seems to leave something out.

Some say: "Let go and let God." Some: "Dropping off mind and body." Then others: "It's all been a misunderstanding."

Your self-partiality is at
the root of all your illusions.
There aren't any illusions
when you don’t have this
preference for yourself.
- Bankei (1622-1693)

Some say: "Wholeness." Some say: "Holy Spirit." Then others: "Don't ask!"

I ask.

If we let go of the partial, do we fall into the whole?

When time ends, is there only the infinite origin?

If there is not one concrete word or image expressed, is there anything actually being said?

Between Walls

the back wings
of the

hospital where
nothing

will grow lie
cinders

in which shine
the broken

pieces of a green
bottle
(Poem by William Carlos Williams)

Maybe the guy who likes math is right when he says (wishes?) all religions are collapsing and will disappear.

Only slivers of broken glass.

Don't walk barefooted, eh?

Just last week, three and a half years later, I learn a friend's son, Sean Thomas, died in Oregon on Nov. 23, 2005 at age 33 of heart attack. I knew him as a tyke, and as he grew.

I recall learning last year that Mary Christina died in Pennsylvania on Nov. 22, 2005 at age 49 of lung cancer. It was three years later I learned of her death. I knew her over two dozen years as friend and colleague.

These deaths, especially sudden hearing of them, even these years later, sneak up on me.

Death, especially being out of touch, surprises.

As long as you are subject
To a life bound by force of habit,
You are not free from the
Burden of the body.
- Kuei-Shan (771-854

I note the coincidence of their deaths, one calendar day apart. Just that. And I light a stick of incense for them.

A Basque proverb reminds us, “Mountains don’t need mountains, but humans need humans.” Our need for each other is a birthday present given to each newborn child, for keeps. As we embrace this greatest of gifts, we learn to move gracefully in a dance of kinship.
(--from Loneliness/Belonging, Br. David) http://www.gratefulness.org/t/belonging.htm,

I've not been much of a dancer. I don't just attend and sit off to the side, I don't attend.

Still, kinship.

Rain.

And yet we belong the way Ragged belongs to Bald and rain from the sky to the earth. The myth is awareness. Logic says: Out of sight, out of mind; Out of mind, no longer existing; Out of touch, nothing felt.

We might not feel it. Might not see it. Nor even know it.

But we belong.

To one another.

And to all of it.

It is our calling.

This life!

All at once.

Each morning is the first. Each evening the last.

8

The supreme good is like water,
which nourishes all things without trying to.
It is content with the low places that people disdain.
Thus it is like the Tao.

In dwelling, live close to the ground.
In thinking, keep to the simple.
In conflict, be fair and generous.
In governing, don't try to control.
In work, do what you enjoy.
In family life, be completely present.

When you are content to be simply yourself
and don't compare or compete,
everybody will respect you.
(--from Tao Te Ching, trans. Stephen Mitchell)

Between evening and morning is night.

It is night centers us.

Look again.

Re-spect.

David Whyte advocates radical simplicity. "Try to get back to the essential steps," he says in interview on New Dimensions.

Laundry blows in Sunday morning breeze and sun. Roger Federer and Andy Roddick hit tennis balls back and forth in All England Finals at Wimbledon.

Sky clouds up again.

Like the little stream
Making its way
Through the mossy crevices,
I, too, quietly
Turn clear and transparent.
- Hakuin (1686-1768)

With Saskia away there's nothing planned for hospitality today. Just laundry. Nothing resembling Kornfield's "After the Ecstasy, the Laundry." My gloss would be -- during the laundry, a bit of solitude.

WHAT TO REMEMBER WHEN WAKING

In that first
hardly noticed
moment
to which you wake,
coming back
to this life
from the other
more secret,
moveable
and frighteningly
honest
world
where everything
began,
there is a small
opening
into the new day
which closes
the moment
you begin
your plans.

What you can plan
is too small
for you to live.

What you can live
wholeheartedly
will make plans
enough
for the vitality
hidden in your sleep.

To be human
is to become visible
while carrying
what is hidden
as a gift to others.

To remember
the other world
in this world
is to live in your
true inheritance.

You are not
a troubled guest
on this earth,
you are not
an accident
amidst other accidents
you were invited
from another and greater
night
than the one
from which
you have just emerged.

Now, looking through
the slanting light
of the morning
window toward
the mountain
presence
of everything
that can be,
what urgency
calls you to your
one love? What shape
waits in the seed
of you to grow
and spread
its branches
against a future sky?

Is it waiting
in the fertile sea?
In the trees
beyond the house?
In the life
you can imagine
for yourself?
In the open
and lovely
white page
on the waiting desk?
(~ Poem by David Whyte, in The House of Belonging)

Becoming visible is difficult enough. Becoming transparent exceeds that task. Then, to just be the ordinary, manifesting itself in the everyday, is real practice.

A sacrifice to God is a contrite spirit
I acknowledge my transgression, says David. If I admit my fault, then you will pardon it. Let us never assume that if we live good lives we will be without sin; our lives should be praised only when we continue to beg for pardon. But men are hopeless creatures, and the less they concentrate on their own sins, the more interested they become in the sins of others. They seek to criticize, not to correct. Unable to excuse themselves, they are ready to accuse others. This was not the way that David showed us how to pray and make amends to God, when he said: I acknowledge my transgression, and my sin is ever before me. He did not concentrate on others’ sins; he turned his thoughts on himself. He did not merely stroke the surface, but he plunged inside and went deep down within himself. He did not spare himself, and therefore was not impudent in asking to be spared.
(From a sermon by Saint Augustine, bishop; in Office of Readings, 14th Sunday of the Year, Ordinary Time)

I'm no longer fond of sin-talk.

There's something else to see. Another way of speaking.

"Love is a fierce form of attention in which you see yourself," says David Whyte to Michael Toms referring to Pema Chodron's path. To see yourself, clearly and with compassion, is to see everyone else clearly and with compassion. Not to see in this way is to perpetuate separation, discord, war, and suffering.

To see we must become visible so as to become transparent, so as to be ordinary manifestation of the Itself of God.

That peace, that loving compassion, is a manifestation devoutly to be wished.

Until such time, it is a day of solitude, drying laundry, and cutting weeds grown wildly huge during the weeks of rain.

A spate of sunlight. An hour, then two, of it. It lengthens. I do laundry. I string lines from barn to boat to roof rack of car back to starboard side. I stand back and admire the shirts on hangers, everything else draped over tied line. The rarity of sun-drying in Maine this season!

Then, from over mountain, dark clouds. Storm approaches. All grows dark. The few hours of sunlight is gone. Again, as so often and without surcease, the sky opens. Tremendous downpour. For close to an hour. I apologize to my newly re-soaked clothing strung across the dooryard. They'll stay put there overnight. Think of it as camping out. The rain has continued for hours. It's what I get for having a mountain out back I can't see over.

And Jesus said to them, ‘A prophet is only despised in his own country, among his own relations and in his own house’; and he could work no miracle there, though he cured a few sick people by laying his hands on them. He was amazed at their lack of faith.
(--from Mark 6:1-6)

At Lectio in cabin this morning we consider that one who speaks truth is not easily welcomed. Truth is a funny guest. It threatens what we believe. Then we get angry. Attack the truth and the person conveying it. Just one more dishonored lout driven away.

Just don't seek from another
Or you'll be far estranged from self.
I now go on alone
Meeting it everywhere
It now is just what I am
I now am not it.
You must comprehend in this way
To merge with thusness.
- Dongshan Liangjie (807-869)

Maybe we drive truth away because it consorts with others. We want it for ourselves. Jealousy shoots the other then takes one's own life. A perfect murder suicide. Truth wanders away disconsolate.

A prophet speaks forth truth. There's no foretelling truth. Truth only exists in the present moment.

We open our eyes. We open our mouth.

We see what we are.

Saying.

Speculation is not seeing. It is guesswork. Don't guess. Just don't know.

You will see then that
both your body and mind,
together with the mountains,
rivers, space, and earth
of the outward world,
are all within the
wonderful, illumined, and true Mind.
- Surangama Sutra

Everything within mind cannot be known. Nothing there can be known. What then?

‘You believe because you can see me.
Happy are those who have not seen and yet believe.’
(--from John 20: 24-29)

Thomas presages "Seeing is believing." No-seeing is erroneously called faith. Nor is it the "certainty" many espouse.

John might have seen it unclearly. Thomas wasn't about experience nor about seeing. Not even about believing.

Thomas sought his true name.

What is it?

God has no name And yet His Name becomes the final lesson that all things are one, and at this lesson does all learning end. All names are unified; all space is filled with truth's reflection. Every gap is closed, and separation healed. (--from Lesson 184, ACIM)

It is a matter of 1 and 0. Open or closed.

Closed loop or open transcending spiral.

Thomas longed to be himself, face to face.

There is no out from inside. There is no in from outside.

There is only true mind.

Reflecting what is here.

We danced to Credence Clearwater Revival's Have You Ever Seen the Rain, and Who'll Stop the Rain this morning while wrapping cookies and this evening after A Course in Miracles.

Singularly radiating
Is the wondrous Light;
Free is it from the bondage
Of matter and the senses.
Not bound by words and letters,
The Essence is nakedly exposed
In its pure eternity.
Never defiled is the Mind-nature;
It exists in perfection
From the very beginning.
By merely casting away your delusions
The Suchness of Buddhahood is realized.
- Seng Ts'an

Heavy rain with thunder and lightning.

What is God's name?

God's name is what is revealing and inviting Itself.

God is a pure no-thing,
concealed in now and here:
the less you reach for him,
the more he will appear.
(-- Poem by Angelus Silesius, 1624-1677)

Flashing light across sky dark gray with fog and mist.

Cherry Blossoms and Butoh. The performance of soggy early July.

If God has no name, every word we pronounce tells us what God transcends.

Forgive everything. Withhold nothing. Free the imprisoned self encircled by the ego. Forget tomorrow.

To practice the Tao
Is like defending the forbidden
Royal Palace under invasion.
Guard it closely with your life,
And fight for it with all your might!
Behold, if the freezing cold
Has not yet penetrated
To the core of your bones,
How can it be possible for you
To smell the fresh fragrance
Of the blooming plum blossom?
- Huang Po

If we're going to ride a bicycle or an ox, ride well. Don't fall off unless you have to. Then fall well.

Be careful, my child, in all you do, well-disciplined in all your behaviour. Do to no one what you would not want done to you. Give your bread to those who are hungry, and your clothes to those who are naked. Whatever you own in plenty, devote a proportion to almsgiving. Bless the Lord God in everything; beg him to guide your ways and bring your paths and purposes to their end.
(--Tobit 4:14-15,16,19 )

The sangha is all of it. Forget everything else and what is sought after appears of itself with no effort.

Call it love. Or truth. Even wisdom compassion.

No one knows the rules of the game.

Not even that it is a game.

No.

One.

Saskia completes lobster cookies for the couple's wedding.

So it is.

Listening at mass this morning I hear the words "this" and "is" and "us."

Outwardly, all activities cease;
Inwardly, the mind stops its panting.
When one"s mind has become a wall,
Then he may begin to enter the Tao.
(--Bodhidharma)

There's not much need to travel anywhere away from home.

This
Us.
Thus
Theos.
Is
This
Us

Sitting in cabin reading book on zen, cat in loft, dog on rug, I stretch along zabuton leaning against zafu along wall. Fire in wood stove to singe dampness.

Everything seems silly.

Except solitude.

It's little noted. Not this year. A mere afterthought.

13 years ago today we opened the bookshop/bakery by the harbor. Two months shy of today we moved out, losing our lease to a new owner of the building. That was long ago.

There is an adamantine Buddha Nature
Within the bodies of sentient beings.
Like the sun, it is essentially bright,
Perfect, and complete.
Although vast and limitless,
It is merely covered by the layered clouds
Of the five skandas.
Like a lamp inside a jar,
Its light shines nonetheless.
- Sutra of the Ten Stages

I begin to feel old. I feel like a mud-puddle after 9 days of rain.

The cedar boardwalk to sliding door by bird feeder is built. The enormous stone placed between two 8' lengths is perfect. I strain my body transporting it from behind barn past muddy runoff.

We watch and listen to Chalmers Johnson Speaking Freely Vol.4. His words are stark and clear. The United States is in serious trouble trying to be a Military Empire and a Domestic Democracy. The latter is failing.

Sheep In Fog
by Sylvia Plath

The hills step off into whiteness.
People or stars
Regard me sadly, I disappoint them.

The train leaves a line of breath.
O slow
Horse the colour of rust,

Hooves, dolorous bells ----
All morning the
Morning has been blackening,

A flower left out.
My bones hold a stillness, the far
Fields melt my heart.

They threaten
To let me through to a heaven
Starless and fatherless, a dark water.

(--Poem by Sylvia Plath)

Johnson feels it is just about too late.

Plath sees it her own way.

As for me -- at least the cedar boards are fragrant.

For events, visit:

http://sites.google.com/site/meetingbrookhermitage/Home/events-at-meetingbrook

Every mother and father, grandmother and grandfather, aunt and uncle, school-teacher and corner-sitting coffee drinker has possessed the sage understanding-without-comprehension whenever they responded to the question "Why?" with "Because!"

Morning sitting. Rokie and me. Fog and mist. Damp and stillness. Boardwalk complete. A long invitation to feet.

You always have the most of everything – of faith, of eloquence, of understanding, of keenness for any cause, and the biggest share of our affection – so we expect you to put the most into this work of mercy too. Remember how generous the Lord Jesus was: he was rich, but he became poor for your sake, to make you rich out of his poverty. This does not mean that to give relief to others you ought to make things difficult for yourselves: it is a question of balancing what happens to be your surplus now against their present need, and one day they may have something to spare that will supply your own need. That is how we strike a balance: as scripture says: The man who gathered much had none too much, the man who gathered little did not go short.
(--2 Corinthians 8:7,9,13-15)

At conversation on Friday Jay and O'a said the word "because" several times illustrating the answer often given to the question "Why?" when asked. The word was suddenly heard "Be Cause."

There is no answer to the question "Why?".

There is only a response: "Be Cause!"

Nothing precedes "Why" --

There is only the invitation to "Be Cause" -- that is, originate what now happens with your asking. Become source. Be origin.

Get started.

Buddha, being originally "empty" and "without Form" takes the Form of the Thus-Come, whether as the simple Form of Buddha, as in sambbogakaya, or as the double Form of man-Buddha, and is revealed as such. Essentially this means an ekkenosis ("making oneself empty"), even though at first glance it may appear to be just the opposite. The transition from being without Form to being in Form means non-ego and Compassion, like a schoolmaster playing with the children. In any case, throughout the basic thought of Buddhology, especially in the Mahayana tradition, the concepts of emptiness , Compassion, and non-ego are seen to be inseparably connected. The Buddhist way of life as well as its way of thought are permeated with kenosis and ekkenosis. Tathagata is taken to mean both "Thus-Gone" as well as Thus-Come." The reason is easy to understand, since disclosure is here inseparable from keeping hidden, being without Form from being in Form, emptiness from Compassion. That is, taking Form means a self-determination, and self-determination means negation (or self-negation). Compassion means a self-negation, a "making oneself empty," as a disclosure of the original emptiness. Thus-Come always means Thus-Gone.
(--footnote 4, p.288, from chapter 2: The Personal and the Impersonal in Religion, in Religion and Nothingness, by Keiji Nishitani c. 1982)

This morning Rokie and I were cause for the meditation cabin.

Red squirrels surround the house, barn, and cabin, chanting their morning psalms.

If we don't ask why, we'll never get started. If we do ask, we'd better get ready to get busy (or perhaps, get not-busy) with life.

Of course, there are always new questions -- it's what we do.

Like: "Why Be Cause?"

Faith is nothing doing what is being done.

It is the response to the question: "What is the sight of God?"

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God

Bodily health is a good thing, but what is truly blessed is not only to know how to keep one’s health but actually to be healthy. If someone praises health but then goes and eats food that makes him ill, what is the use to him, in his illness, of all his praise of health?
We need to look at the text we are considering in just the same way. It does not say that it is blessed to know something about the Lord God, but that it is blessed to have God within oneself. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.
I do not think that this is simply intended to promise a direct vision of God if one purifies one’s soul. On the other hand, perhaps the magnificence of this saying is hinting at the same thing that is said more clearly to another audience: The kingdom of God is within you. That is, we are to understand that when we have purged our souls of every illusion and every disordered affection, we will see our own beauty as an image of the divine nature.
And it seems to me that the Word of God, in these few words, was saying something like this: In you there is a certain desire to contemplate what is truly good. But when you hear that God’s majesty is exalted high above the heavens, that his glory beyond comprehension, that his beauty is beyond description, that his very nature can neither be perceived nor be understood, do not fall into despair or think you can never have the sight that you desire.
So if, by love and right living, you wash off the filth that has become stuck to your heart, the divine beauty will shine forth in you. Think of iron, which at one moment is dark and tarnished and the next, once the rust has been scraped off, shines and glistens brightly in the sun. It is the same with the inner core of man, which the Lord calls the heart. It has been in damp and foul places and is covered in patches of rust; but once the rust has been scraped off, it will recover itself and once more resemble its archetype. And so it will be good, since what resembles the good must be good itself.
Therefore, whoever looks at himself sees in himself what he desires. And whoever is pure in heart is blessed because, seeing his own purity, he sees the archetype reflected in the image. If you see the sun in a mirror then you are not looking directly at the sky, but still you are seeing the sun just as much as someone who looks directly at it. In the same way, the Lord is saying, although you do not have the strength to withstand the direct sight of the great and inaccessible light of God, if you look within yourselves once you have returned to the grace of the image that was placed in you from the beginning, you will find in yourselves all that you seek.
For to be God is to be pure, to be free from weakness and passion, to be separated from all evil. If these things are all true of you then God is within you. If your thought is kept pure from evil habits, free from passion and weakness, separated from all stain, you are blessed because your vision is sharp and clear. You are able to see what is invisible to those who have not been purified. The eyes of your soul have been cleansed of material filth and through the purity of your heart you have a clear sight of the vision of blessedness. What is that vision? It is purity, sanctity, simplicity, and other reflections of the brightness of the Divine nature. It is the sight of God.
(--by St Gregory of Nyssa on the Beatitudes, form Office of Readings, Saturday of Week 12)

The sight of God is the seeing of what God is seeing.

Only "no-one" can see God and live. Nothing else is real.

Be nothing else doing nothing else.

Faith is nothing doing what is being done.

Early cabin sitter drops off newspaper before leaving. Says gloomy weather will linger. Jokes that gloomy weather cheers us up. Tells after invitation to coffee there's another guest sitting in cabin. We, of course, are late for practice.

At the sound of the bell
in the silent night,
I wake from my dream
in this dreamworld of ours.
Gazing at the reflection
of the moon in a clear pool,
I see, beyond my form, my real form.
- Kojisei

Arjuna and Krishna dialogued during Friday Evening Conversation about no expectations. Then we (7 of us) argued the timetable, cost, workforce, and design of BookShed to take place opposite barn and Wohnkuche. No acrimony, just direct pummeling and slamming of our idiosyncrasies. Good enough interaction. This morning's guest said, no, not to buy 20x10 from shed-city (although they make a good product) but make it a community slugfest that will deepen the lore of the hermitage.

Buddhas and Patriarchs appeared on earth to teach the doctrine of prajna. The Sanskrit prajna means wisdom in Chinese. This wisdom is the Buddha-nature that we originally possess. It is also called Self-Mind or Self-Nature. This essence is originally undefiled, so it is called "clear and pure." It is originally without darkness, so it is called "bright." It is originally vast and all inclusive, so it is called "void and empty." It is originally without delusion, so it is called "the one truth." It is originally immutable, so it is called tathata. It is originally illuminating everywhere, so it is called "perfect enlightenment." It is originally calm and extinct, so it is called "nirvana."
- Han-shan Te-ch'ing (1546-1623)

In prison Friday, two conversations: (Tao te Ching, 1st chapter; and, Phillis Wheatley 1753 – December 5, 1784.) When Stephen Mitchell's translation suggests that source is darkness, one of the men shuddered that his Christian mind had trouble with the association of devil and darkness.

1

The tao that can be told
is not the eternal Tao
The name that can be named
is not the eternal Name.

The unnamable is the eternally real.
Naming is the origin
of all particular things.

Free from desire, you realize the mystery.
Caught in desire, you see only the manifestations.

Yet mystery and manifestations
arise from the same source.
This source is called darkness.

Darkness within darkness.
The gateway to all understanding.

(--Tao Te Ching, ,Written by Lao-tzu, From a translation by S. Mitchell)

It came round to the possibility that "darkness" might be understood as "not-knowing." This not-knowing precedes any notion of God, any idea called "devil." The biblical origins emerge from darkness, chaos, and the void. Perhaps the "don't-know mind" is the true source of wisdom manifesting in mystery throughout what we call 'creation.'

I really like that conversations happen here and there.

As spring changes into summer, this poem by by E. E. Cummings:

Spring is like a perhaps hand

III

Spring is like a perhaps hand
(which comes carefully
out of Nowhere)arranging
a window,into which people look(while
people stare
arranging and changing placing
carefully there a strange
thing and a known thing here)and

changing everything carefully

spring is like a perhaps
Hand in a window
(carefully to
and fro moving New and
Old things,while
people stare carefully
moving a perhaps
fraction of flower here placing
an inch of air there)and

without breaking anything.
(Poem by by E. E. Cummings)

No need to break anything anymore. Everything is already broken within wholeness.

As itself.

Is.

Complete, alone, together.

Gateway.

Sweep, sweep.

The shadow of the bamboo
Sweeps the stair
All night long.
Yet not a mote of dust is stirred.
The moon beams penetrate
To the bottom of the pool,
Yet in the water not a trace is left.
- Chikan Zenji

Two known entertainers die today.

Sweep, sweep, sweep. How lovely the misty fog settling on board walk to cabin.

Living and dying -- we're in this together.

Watched War Made Easy, documentary based on Norman Soloman's book. Journalist I.F. Stone wrote: "All governments are run by liars and nothing they say should be believed." This sums up the film. Investigative work, not blind obeisance, is needed.

It's about time -- war is. Something ought to be done about time.

Death is not an event in life: we do not live to experience death. If we take eternity to mean not infinite temporal duration but timelessness, then eternal life belongs to those who live in the present.
--Ludwig Wittgenstein

Walking Ragged Mountain this afternoon I say hello with each step to the deceased members of family and friends. I imagine they are right on the other side of time just as they were when they passed through. I say hello and ask how they are today. It is raining and ground is water-saturated in this time schema on the mountain.

Inscribed on the Wall of the Hut by the Lake

If you want to be a mountain dweller,
No need to trek to India to find one.
I’ve got a thousand peaks
To pick from, right here in the lake.
Fragrant grasses, white clouds,
To hold me here.
What holds you there,
World dweller?
- Chiao Jan (730–799)

When I want to visit the earth I step out my door.

It is said John the Baptist knew in the womb his cousin Jesus. Might be fanciful story. But if it is true before birth, why not after death?

Hello John! How are you today?

Neda is, or was, her name. Shot dead in Iran.

The sorry pattern of deteriorating mind that effects terror and revenge in the name of disintegrating categories of good and evil.

There's something unsatisfying about both omniscience and nescience. I respectfully want to disagree with a friend who wrote: "God does NOT know what is happening...God IS what is happening." Neither I nor God are able to word the disagreement.

The great path has no gates,
Thousands of roads enter it.
When you pass through this gateless gate
You walk freely between heaven and earth.
- Mumonkan

This inability to word what is happening is the beginning recognition and orientation of mindfulness. As mindfulness deepens, the desire to find words for the ineffable diminishes in intensity. Maybe we really can't judge with any repute.

Jesus said to his disciples, ‘Do not judge, and you will not be judged; because the judgements you give are the judgements you will get, and the amount you measure out is the amount you will be given. Why do you observe the splinter in your brother’s eye and never notice the plank in your own? How dare you say to your brother, “Let me take the splinter out of your eye,” when all the time there is a plank in your own? Hypocrite! Take the plank out of your own eye first, and then you will see clearly enough to take the splinter out of your brother’s eye.’
(Matthew 7:1-5 )

Maybe this is my body. Maybe this is my blood. This world. This moment. This inability to enter language so deeply there is no sound necessary. Only the touch and presence of what we call 'love.'

The world in which we live today and about whose suffering we know so much seems more than ever a world from which Christ has withdrawn himself. How can I believe that in this world we are constantly being prepared to receive the Spirit? Still I think this is exactly the message of hope. God has not withdrawn himself. He sent his Son to share our human condition and the Son sent us his Spirit to lead us into the intimacy of his divine life. It is in the midst of the chaotic suffering of humanity that the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Love, makes himself visible. But can we recognize his presence?
(--pp.179-180, from The Genesee Diary, by Henri J.M. Nouwen)

The thought of hope in the Holy Spirit doesn't satisfy.

The practice of being aware of what is taking place is all I can muster.

For now.

I mourn as those who mourn do.

These soggy rainy days.

I could just as easily not attend mass. The ritual is so familiar. I attend on weekday mornings when possible so as to sit between word and silence.

Upon the clatter of a broken tile
All I had learned was at once forgotten.
Amending my nature is needless;
Pursuing the tasks of everyday life
I walk along the ancient path.
I am not disheartened in the mindless void.
Wherever I go I leave no footprint,
Walking without color or sound.
- Chikan Zenji

We complete three sections of boardwalk to meditation cabin.

I never think I will awaken in the morning.

Going to sleep is the end of this thought.

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.

For current information about Meetingbrook: Update and events

http://sites.google.com/site/meetingbrookhermitage/Home/events-at-meetingbrook

http://sites.google.com/site/meetingbrookhermitage/hermitage-upate

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.