Just keep moving. Of course you can't go home again. You've never left. You are your home. There is no old neighborhood.

People of the way journey through the world

Responding to conditions,

Carefree and without restraint.

Like clouds finally raining,

Like moonlight following the current,

Like orchids growing in shade,

Like spring arising in everything,

They act without mind,

They respond with certainty.

- Hongzhi Zhengjue (1091–1157)

I'm certain the nostalgia and shivers thinking back to the streets of my youth and the subway cars of my schooling are crumpled wax paper with olive oil drippings better tossed into corner trash cans. The football player who had to sideline with a heart murmur retires from NYPD after 20 years then dies in 1984 from heart attack, says a Bay Ridge Forum. We'd be on the same train until 59th Street when he'd exit for the 4th Avenue Local. We travelled to 186 N. 6th Street in Williamsburg. For unknown reasons I sign into alumni site of my high school. Drifting. Backwards. Fifty years.

Days of 1964

By James Merrill

Houses, an embassy, the hospital.
Our neighborhood sun-cured if trembling still
In pools of the night’s rain . . .
Across the street that led to the center of town
A steep hill kept one company part way
Or could be climbed in twenty minutes
For some literally breathtaking views,
Framed by umbrella pines, of city and sea.
Underfoot, cyclamen, autumn crocus grew
Spangled as with fine sweat among the relics
Of good times had by all. If not Olympus,
An out-of-earshot, year-round hillside revel.

I brought home flowers from my climbs.
Kyria Kleo who cleans for us
Put them in water, sighing Virgin, Virgin.
Her legs hurt. She wore brown, was fat, past fifty,
And looked like a Palmyra matron
Copied in lard and horsehair. How she loved
You, me, loved us all, the bird, the cat!
I think now she was love. She sighed and glistened
All day with it, or pain, or both.
(We did not notably communicate.)
She lived nearby with her pious mother
And wastrel son. She called me her real son.

I paid her generously, I dare say.
Love makes one generous. Look at us. We’d known
Each other so briefly that instead of sleeping
We lay whole nights, open, in the lamplight,
And gazed, or traded stories.

One hour comes back—you gasping in my arms
With love, or laughter, or both,
I having just remembered and told you
What I’d looked up to see on my way downtown at noon:

poor old Kleo, her aching legs,
Trudging into the pines. I called.
Called three times before she turned.
Above a tight, skyblue sweater, her face
Was painted. Yes. Her face was painted
Clown-white, white of the moon by daylight,
Lidded with pearl, mouth a poinsettia leaf.
Eat me, pay me—the erotic mask
Worn the world over by illusion
To weddings of itself and simple need.

Startled mute, we had stared—was love illusion?—
And gone our ways. Next, I was crossing a square
In which a moveable outdoor market’s
Vegetables, chickens, pottery kept materializing
Through a dream-press of hagglers each at heart
Leery lest he be taken, plucked,
The bird, the flower of that November mildness,
Self lost up soft clay paths, or found, foothold,
Where the bud throbs awake
The better to be nipped, self on its knees in mud—
Here I stopped cold, for both our sakes;

And calmer on my way home bought us fruit.

Forgive me if you read this. (And may Kyria Kleo,
Should someone ever put it into Greek
And read it aloud to her, forgive me, too.)
I had gone so long without loving,
I hardly knew what I was thinking.

Where I hid my face, your touch, quick, merciful,
Blindfolded me. A god breathed from my lips.
If that was illusion I wanted it to last long;
To dwell, for its daily pittance, with us there,
Cleaning and watering, sighing with love or pain.
I hoped it would climb when it needed to the heights
Even of degradation as I for one
Seemed, those days, to be always climbing

Into a world of wild
Flowers, feasting, tears— or was I falling, legs
Buckling, heights, depths,
Into a pool of each night’s rain?
But you were everywhere beside me, masked,
As who was not, in laughter, pain, and love.

(Poem by James Merrill, “Days of 1964” from Collected Poems. Copyright 2001 by James Merrill.) http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poem.html?id=179111

Some people are love. When we see that, we are lucky. Then, of course, we have to recognize that observing is being observed. I have not always observed well.

We have not looked at Iraq carefully. It is in pain today.

Coordinated Attacks Kill More Than 100 in Iraq
By STEVEN LEE MYERS
Published: May 10, 2010
BAGHDAD — A series of attacks in Baghdad and other cities across Iraq on Monday struck police and army checkpoints, as well as markets, a mayor’s office and a textile factory. The violence appeared to be a coordinated rebuttal of assertions by Iraqi and American commanders that Al Qaeda in Iraq and other extremist groups had suffered debilitating blows in recent weeks.

The attacks, which killed at least 101 people and wounded hundreds more, occurred amid a protracted dispute over the results of the country’s election more than two months ago. Even as the violence continued to unfold across the country through the day, officials blamed the political impasse for creating a security vacuum that extremists hoped to exploit. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/11/world/middleeast/11iraq.html?hpw

Elections -- those fragile attempts to clarify leadership. It is disheartening to read of the number of casualties since 2003 in Iraq. As the United States changed administrations and those responsible for the initial incursion retire with hefty pensions, the attitude of incensed antipathy shifts to expectancy of withdrawal. With little hope of any change there, US forces pack up for Afghanistan or return home with uncertain understanding of what has occurred, inconclusive appreciation of the pain and disaster in the wake.

Casualties of the conflict in Iraq since 2003 (beginning with the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and continuing with the ensuing occupation of Iraq coalition presence, as well as the activities of the various armed groups operating in the country) have come in many forms, and the accuracy of the information available on different types of Iraq War casualties varies greatly.
The table below summarizes some of the Iraqi casualty figures.
Source Iraqi casualties March 2003 to...
Iraq Family Health Survey --151,000 violent deaths. -- June 2006
Lancet survey -- 601,027 violent deaths out of 654,965 excess deaths. --- June 2006
Opinion Research Business survey -- 1,033,000 violent deaths as a result of the conflict. -- August 2007
Associated Press -- 110,600 violent deaths -- April 2009
Iraq Body Count -- 95,888 – 104,595 violent civilian deaths as a result of the conflict. -- April 2010

For troops in the U.S.-led multinational coalition, the death toll is carefully tracked and updated daily, and the names and photographs of those killed in action as well as in accidents have been published widely. Regarding the Iraqis, however, information on both military and civilian casualties is both less precise and less consistent. Estimates of casualty levels are available from reporters on the scene, from officials of involved organizations, and from groups that summarize information on incidents reported in the news media. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Iraq_War

I look out at spring new-green leaf growth on old and tired trees surprised by what they bring forth from within them. This chilly day. This reviving New England earth.

We pray. With chant. To the open. To what is true within and without.

It is a small thing.

Prayer.

It is one of the places love goes when it has no place else to go.

When hearts groan with brokenness and lament.

At Rockport Harbor this morning with coffee and muffin reading New York Times as dogs on other side of Goose Fare run across Marine Park and wind blows clear and bright.

Front page story about "Anwar al-Awlaki, a U.S.-born cleric, [who] has become a central figure in the luring of Western Muslims to violent extremism."

It is one of those stories we're invited to ask how it is a moderate Imam American citizen can turn into an America hating advocate of violence. It would be standard fare -- Who can trust a Muslim? -- except for a nagging question between sips of Dark Roast Sumatra and bites into berry muffin.

That question asks: When is it that ordinary people who have grown tired of the dual citizenship demarcating the rich and powerful -- (Insurance, Wall Street, Banks, Corporations, Legislators, Justices, Executives, Celebrity News Guys and Gals and Entertainers, Pentagon Military and Private Contractors, not to mention the Hierarchy in Churches and other segments of the American Culture that Lord it over the ordinary citizen, common man and woman, main street people, lay persons of every stripe, hoi polloi, the rest of us, we citizens, nobodies, children of life, of god) -- what was I saying? -- oh yes, how is it there's not more of a ruckus of rebellion against the heavy-handed, sweet-talking, there-thereing, false dualisms that contend there is no real problem, only a disagreement between two factions of anything -- left/right, conservative/liberal, haves/have-nots, professionals/amateurs, sophisticates/rubes, the health-insured/the uninsured.(?) (It was, I think, intended as a question.)

These distracting dichotomies serve stasis well. Divisions manage to cement fractures permanently.

BREAKAGE

I go down to the edge of the sea.

How everything shines in the morning light!

The cusp of the whelk,

the broken cupboard of the clam,

the opened, blue mussels,

moon snails, pale pink and barnacle scarred—

and nothing at all whole or shut, but tattered, split,

dropped by the gulls onto the gray rocks and all the moisture gone.

It's like a schoolhouse

of little words,

thousands of words.

First you figure out what each one means by itself,

the jingle, the periwinkle, the scallop

full of moonlight.

Then you begin, slowly, to read the whole story.

(Poem by Mary Oliver)

So bombs and bullets won't work because innocent people tend to get hurt and, let's face it, who can have more bombs and bullets than a power structure whose very economy is based on bombs and bullets. No, something more effective must be found to counter-balance the terror of extremists and governments.

Both are bullies. Both demand absolute control. Punishment prevails. Secrecy and submission is sacred demand. Nature has been replaced by profit, love by national security, and realization of God replaced by conformity to rote and rite.

The mind of the sage is
Empty and calm,
Profoundly calm,
Dealing with the world
Harmoniously
Like bellows taking in air,
Like pipes containing music.
- Chen Ting-Van

I'm no sage.

Disquiet palpitates like Sunday afternoon restless winds where everything appears to be uprooting with passing uncertainty and systems of vagrant restlessness.

For balance some choose suicide. Others self-sacrifice. (A curious distinction made by the subject of the Times story.) One can't be condoned. The other is tribute.

Trappist Thomas Keating when asked about the beginnings of his vocation demurred with the statement he was trying to forget his self and thus would have to think a bit harder to answer the question.

We're all terrified. Either by mass murderers wearing religious insignias or mass murderers wearing military patches. Ordinary Americans are unsure whether to more fear foreign terrorists or their own government. Yet, everyone has a rationale, a creed, a policy, or a self-serving belief they are right in killing and bullying people to advance agendas that make sense only to them and those they pay handsomely to vote or trigger with their views.

This is what we have heard from him,
and the message that we are announcing to you:
God is light; there is no darkness in him at all.
If we say that we are in union with God
while we are living in darkness,
we are lying because we are not living the truth.
But if we live our lives in the light,
as he is in the light,
we are in union with one another,
and the blood of Jesus, his Son,
purifies us from all sin.
If we say we have no sin in us;
we are deceiving ourselves
and refusing to admit the truth;
but if we acknowledge our sins,
then God who is faithful and just
will forgive our sins and purify us
from everything that is wrong.
To say that we have never sinned
is to call God a liar
and to show that his word is not in us.
(--from 1 John 1:1-10)

There are times the words of Christian scripture annoy me as well as their oft-quoting followers. Then there are times they seem to nail the problem squarely into our barn doors.

So much is wrong.

What is right?

We must begin, slowly, to pause a while, to read the whole story.

The story of the Cosmos. The story of God. The story of Humankind. It is our own story.

Then to read the fractured syntax and corrupted phrases, the mad rantings and the sickly-liquored contortions of thought we are given instead of sane, clear, sensible, conversation about our lives.

This too is our own story.

We've got to enter the telling.

We've got to learn how to speak.

Green leaves give cover to earth and landing pad to sky. Rain nudges new canopy. Green seclusion. Light wanders off to resting place.

This stillness soothes.

Fallen leaves hide the mountain path.

No one around to ask directions. 

An old monk sweeps the ground.

A novice rushes up to greet me. 

- Jungkwan Ilson (1533-1608)

We're thinking of conducting a new set of meetings. They'll be called, "Talking of Death," (ToD). We'll talk of death, our own and other's. Nothing fancy. Just talking.

We'll try it in a Pilot to Practice series at Tuesday Evening Conversations.

In his book How We Die, Dr. Sherwin B. Nuland writes, "Death belongs to the dying and to those who love them." Clearly, it should. But it doesn't. It belongs to doctors and hospitals and drug manufacturers and insurance programs and policy-makers, all of whom drive the direction of our care and treatment. They own our final days and months. They own our dying. They own it because, over the past several decades, we have turned it over to them. We have ceded control, and now we don't know enough about the process to redirect it or regain control over it.

It doesn't have to be this way. We can reclaim death. We have the power to change it, to make it ours again.

(--Excerpted from Talking About Death Won't Kill You. Copyright 2001 by Virginia Morris.)

Death is personal.

Intimate.

Deserving our words.

Like light nearing dusk in heavy rain.

We can lose our soul.

If we do not use awareness to recognize our soul surrounds us, we lose both awareness and soul.

Time for a walk in the world outside

And a look at who I am

Originally I had no cares


And I am seeking nothing special


Even for my guests I have nothing

To offer except these white stones

And this clear spring water.

- Muso Soseki (1275-1351)

O'Donohue suggests the body is in the soul.

If we are aware of what surrounds us and that of which we are part, we help create soul as the whole of re-integration of inner and outer.

We save our soul.

Hal.

Lelu.

Jah.

Parker Palmer speaks of the soul as being shy, original, wild, natural, and elemental best glimpsed by silence and stillness.

Deep hearing, then, is not just an auditory sensation, involving the ear, but a matter of the whole . 'Deep hearing of the Dharma' means embodying the Buddha Dharma, an experiential awakening of the total self, conscious and unconscious, mind and body.
-Rev. Taitetsu Unno "Sound Meditation" (Fall 1999) Tricycle

The ground of Being is compassion, love, forgiveness, and equality. Do you want to use the word "God"?

Call it what you will. The name doesn't matter.

What matters is that you are what those words indicate.

What matters is the activity of Being.

Doing what words are.

Embodying them.

Souling.

Stillness.

In act.

Final class. Final course...
Heart shouts. Mind quiets. Things pass --
Something about mother 29 years Cinco de Mayo

Of course you can't change the past. You can only change your mind. Once the mind changes, there is no past.

The wind in the pines

Cleans one's ears, 

The song of the stream

Invokes the spirit of a dream.

After the prayer for the dead,

I drink a cup of tea, 

The wind and the moon

Always befriend me.

- Jungkwan Ilson (1533-1608)

Of course I am dying. I can only change my thinking. Once thinking changes, there is no death.

  The world of dew  

is the world of dew,    

      And yet, and yet-- 

--Kobayashi Issa, (1763-1827)

Life has been good. The 85 year old man said he was closer to death than I was. Nah, I said, it happens in a flash, with each breath. He was just shutting down quicker with age. Death is not concerned with age.

Marching

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

("Marching," from Jim Harrison's "Saving Daylight" 2006)

I'm not much interested as to where things go from here. Time is borrowed. I don't like loans.

The world no longer makes sense. There's not much sense heard in political, economic, religious, or academic corridors. Niches are carved. Wallets are stuffed. Ballots are bought. Concepts are bandied.

Hello must only be hello. Goodbye, goodbye.

It's hard to figure out what the fuss is.

Here's my mind. Lose it, please.

Better still, ignore it.

What is in where? Who is in whom? When are we in the place we are?

The questions have ramifications. I am caught wondering if the woman at reception desk, nurse at station, man in wheelchair rolling down corridor for lunch -- (all three in Belfast)-- whether these are contemporary expressions of someone named Siddhartha in India, Kuan Yin in China, or Jesus in Palestine.

What is in each? What is each in? In the realm of unknowing mystery and benevolent ignorance, who can claim to know what cannot be known?

the great advantage of being alive

the great advantage of being alive
(instead of undying) is not so much
that mind no more can disprove than prove
what heart may feel and soul may touch
--the great(my darling)happens to be
that love are in we,that love are in we

and here is a secret they never will share
for whom create is less than have
or one times one than when times where--
that we are in love,that we are in love:
with us they've nothing times nothing to do
(for love are in we am in i are in you)

this world(as timorous itsters all
to call their cowardice quite agree)
shall never discover our touch and feel
--for love are in we are in love are in we;
for you are and i am and we are(above
and under all possible worlds)in love

a billion brains may coax undeath
from fancied fact and spaceful time--
no heart can leap,no soul can breathe
but by the sizeless truth of a dream
whose sleep is the sky and the earth and the sea.
For love are in you am in i are in we

(Poem by e. e. cummings)

Reading about the Benedictine way of living at table during Sunday Evening Practice. The author wrote: "Existence cannot be understood, only experienced." (p. 68 in Always We Begin Again, by John McQuiston)

When mind changes, world changes. What you see is what you get. When you see, nothing is hidden, all is transparent.

Dutch tomato soup with garlic bread while watching a sting film about a con man getting conned. Everyone is in on it, but you only find out in the end.

In the end we'll find out. Until then, we're stuck in ignorance.

Happily, they say, some have seen through.

Stories worth hearing.

Like love, in, through, out.

Are in you am in I are in we.

Blessed words, blessed poet!

Written be you and me.

Morning prayer and remembrance. It is Sunday at hermitage. Turn of mind, words from Merton and scripture, bite of bread, sip of wine, spate of silence, toll of bell, bowing before exiting.

The sign on cabin porch reads, "We begin here...We begin now."

The words of James read:

Religion pure and undefiled before God the Father is this: to give aid to orphans and widows in their tribulations and to keep oneself unspotted from this world. (James1:22-27)

Here's the way a hermit hears these words:

• Religion is "this".
• Help those who are no longer attached the way they once were.
• Keep your self out of sight; don't be spotted anywhere.

Many people prefer to be out in the open. I prefer to be within the open. Like the Trappist monk who said his life was "in God," (a phrase to sit with), the preference to be within the open out of sight completely connected to "this" is s heartfelt sense of religion I can assent to this 1st Sunday in May, 5th of Easter, and a morning on which the Market Basket on the corner of Rts 1 and 90 have a special of coffee and muffin for one dollar.

Calvin's Theory of Predestination

Some people will be chosen
for the job, the Wednesday night poker game

for the limited number of spaces
available in heaven. Only so many

spoons fit in one drawer your mother
would say

and the same is true for clothes
and closets

shelves and cans and let's be honest
hearts and loves.

I cannot love you because I love another
is a problem

that sometimes gets admitted
over wine

in a restaurant
filled with people choosing

this dish over that meat
choosing something that will fill

the middle of their beings
or leave them slavering like a cheetah

who missed and pass that
would you? and let's be friends. Yes

let's drink to being friends
and then we can all go on our way

remembering the best part
about being chosen is that

you do not have to stop
for anyone along the way.

( Poem, "Calvin's Theory of Predestination," by Betsy Johnson-Miller, from Rain When You Want Rain. © Mayapple Press, 2010. http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/)

I sit in the loft of the meditation cabin. The wohnkuche is filled with coffee and tea drinkers, omelet and salad and potato eaters, apfel kuchen nibblers, and war story tellers. The bookshed is used by those needing respite from the crowd. But no one else would climb the tricky ladder to the loft of the chapel/zendo to feel the solitude of silence and feel the fresh air of the askance window looking out to Sally's land.

I am unspotted. The drifted away are happy with one another.

The phoebes work on their nest under the eave outside the left window down below.

I find "this" glorious.

Gift.

A gratefulness for all.

Of this.

I am.

Each light year is 9.5 trillion kilometres.

The Carina Nebula is 7500 light-years from earth. The length of the pictured cloud is 3 light-years.

Hubble's first images since servicing Mission 4. WFC3 visible image of the Carina Nebula. Composed of gas and dust, the pictured pillar resides in a tempestuous stellar nursery called the Carina Nebula, located 7500 light-years away in the southern constellation of Carina. Taken in visible light, the image shows the tip of the three-light-year-long pillar, bathed in the glow of light from hot, massive stars off the top of the image.

Photograph by: Handout, NASA

http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.canada.com/technology/Refurbished%2BHubble%2Breveals%2Bcosmic%2Bwonder/1979761/1976867.bin%3Fsize%3D620x400&imgrefurl=http://www.canada.com/technology/Refurbished%2BHubble%2Breveals%2Bcosmic%2Bwonder/1979761/story.html&usg=__NNNBtu5ayyzi_tguR90B33o9HIc=&h=400&w=620&sz=104&hl=en&start=313&itbs=1&tbnid=YCv63WGirs5UmM:&tbnh=88&tbnw=136&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dcarina%2Bnebula%26start%3D294%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DN%26ndsp%3D21%26tbs%3Disch:1

I am correspondingly silenced.

Still, what I am is what it is.

I learned the three virtues from my teacher

And watch the grass in the wind

To know Buddha nature.

When I brood all alone

In the desolate hermitage,

I realize I have lived many

Lives as a monk.

- Hueng Powoo (d.1565)

Today in Hope, Maine, two people married.

What they said the universe echoed: we are in this expanse called love and commit ourselves to it.

We had, back home, tapioca chocolate pudding while rooting for the visitors from space.

Everyone lies. It's what the ego does to protect the ego. It's not a surprise and might not be the major problem that we tell ourselves and therefore others lies.

The problem is when we believe the lies we tell. It would be more useful if we simply recognized the lies as they arise in us and make the decision not to believe or perpetuate the lie.

Climbing Enlightenment Mountain



Enchanted by the name of the mountain,

I decide to climb it with a stick in my hand.

A glimpse of the real mountain:

Clouds float by, waters flow as they will.

- Hueng Powoo (d.1565)

The time arrives when I no longer believe anything said by someone in power. I just recognize that what is said is something worth my skepticism, reason, and deliberation. It does not get my belief.

Nor am I cynical. Just unbelieving. I recognize that the vast majority of what is said is said with a motive that is not merely the bare truth.

The source of truth is available to everyone. The source flows throughout. That's the sentence Saskia spoke at final circle this morning. In prison today the men in conversation said they were cautious about receiving any story. Is there an agenda-less story?

The source runs right through each one of us.

Start there.

Tell no stories without their origins.

Be source flowing throughout.

"My brother is guiltless." That's what the text in ACIM says. There is nothing but the first. One. No two. Nothing to follow and divide. Nothing separate.

"Where there is no love, put love, and you will find love."
(St. John of the Cross)

But of course things are separate. As are egos convinced their way is best. The course wants us to consider that only the Holy Spirit is joyous. The ego courts a wide range of diverting emotions, but the Spirit extends joy alone.

Rosie and Kali stop upstairs the bookshed after Thursday Evening Conversation to tour. Bald Mountain is becoming silhouette to north sky.

"I follow the Way of Love. Wherever love's caravan rests, that is my religion, my faith." (Ibn 'Arabi)

One year ago today and tomorrow we were in the throes of packing up and moving from the in-town bookshop & bakery. We were out at 2am the 1st of May. Now this building is built, books unloading box by box after a year's sequester.

The Afterlife: Letter to Sam Hamill

You may think it strange, Sam, that I'm writing
a letter in these circumstances. I thought
it strange too—the first time. But there's
a misconception I was laboring under, and you
are too, viz. that the imagination in your
vicinity is free and powerful. After all,
you say, you've been creating yourself all
along imaginatively. You imagine yourself
playing golf or hiking in the Olympics or
writing a poem and then it becomes true.
But you still have to do it, you have to exert
yourself, will, courage, whatever you've got, you're
mired in the unimaginative. Here I imagine a letter
and it's written. Takes about two-fifths of a
second, your time. Hell, this is heaven, man.
I can deluge Congress with letters telling
every one of those mendacious sons of bitches
exactly what he or she is, in maybe about
half an hour. In spite of your Buddhist
proclivities, when you imagine bliss
you still must struggle to get there. By the way
the Buddha has his place across town on
Elysian Drive. We call him Bud. He's lost weight
and got new dentures, and he looks a hell of a
lot better than he used to. He always carries
a jumping jack with him everywhere just
for contemplation, but he doesn't make it
jump. He only looks at it. Meanwhile Sidney
and Dizzy, Uncle Ben and Papa Yancey, are
over by Sylvester's Grot making the sweetest,
cheerfulest blues you ever heard. The air,
so called, is full of it. Poems are fluttering
everywhere like seed from a cottonwood tree.
Sam, the remarkable truth is I can do any
fucking thing I want. Speaking of which
there's this dazzling young Naomi who
wiped out on I-80 just west of Truckee
last winter, and I think this is the moment
for me to go and pay her my respects.
Don't go way. I'll be right back.

(Poem by Hayden Carruth)

What's interesting about pain and discomfort is the suspicion that it is the beginning of the end of life. It feels that way. It nearly always goes away. But it will be that one time it settles in for the long haul. It's why solitude is refreshing. No one to say "It's ok," or, "Maybe today." There's enough uncertainty in an hour.

I remember walking Fairmount Park along the Wissahickon in Northwest Philadelphia early spring one year. Runners and cyclists went by.

Time went by.

It's what time does.

They teach best who've nothing to teach.

Like my dog.

Knowledge comes from acquiring and grasping facts. Wisdom comes from reflecting on and digesting experiences, learning their lessons, gaining insights and developing guiding life-principles. The 11th century Islamic poet and philosopher Ibn Gabriol says: "In seeking wisdom, the first step is silence, the second listening, the third remembering, the fourth practicing, the fifth -- teaching others."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lama-surya-das/spiritual-life-wisdom-an_b_552927.html

At class tonight we talked about the cosmos, sex education, and aesthetics. We liked the poem by W.S. Merwin:

Finding a Teacher

In the woods I came on an old friend fishing
and I asked him a question
and he said Wait

fish were rising in the deep stream
but his line was not stirring
but I waited
it was a question about the sun

about my two eyes
my ears my mouth
my heart the earth with its four seasons
my feet where I was standing
where I was going

it slipped through my hands
as though it were water
into the river
it flowed under the trees
it sank under hulls far away
then where I stood night fell

I no longer knew what to ask
I could tell that his line had no hook
I understood that I was to stay and eat with him

(~ Poem by W.S. Merwin)

To become unstuck. To be unhooked. To learn to wait.

I learned the three virtues from my teacher
And watch the grass in the wind
To know Buddha nature.
When I brood all alone
In the desolate hermitage,
I realize I have lived many
Lives as a monk.
- Hueng Powoo (d.1565)

Looking alone.

Is all.

The company.

Needed.

My dog looks at everything.

Nothing escapes his gaze.

I hope Arizona changes its mind about the new immigration law.

I anticipate being rounded up some day as being from an alien dimension dropped here to earth without proper documentation. Sure, the hospital my mother took me home from says I was born from her (Thank you, mom) and was therefore a legal birth (Thanks, Dad) legitimized by state and church (Thanks NY and St Athanasius Parish) therefore heir to all the demands and benefits (Thanks IRS and FDR) of this fine land. But, really, does anyone know exactly where I came from prior to the in-utero razzamatazz featured in National Geographic and Biology 101?

So, when I am able to establish myself in nothing, and nothing in myself, uprooting and casting out what is in me, then I can pass into the naked being of God, which is the naked being of the Spirit.

[Meister Eckhart, German sermon 7, trans M.O’C. Walshe]

Without clothes, without body, without name, and without privilege, what is it we expect God to be?

Nothing there. No documents. No permits. No green card. No fixed home.

When they arrest me they will have to arrest the nameless, bodiless, placeless Spirit that holds me in being and enlivens my very legitimate-less self.

Mark me well -- it is disconcerting to know that every church and mosque, temple and chapel will be turned over to the men on Wall Street who are betting short that God has been de-legitimized and de-commissioned and frocked with bright orange waiting to be sent to the holding tank of the People-In-Charge.

"The modern West is actually an intense combination of good news, bad news. The self or subject of rationality was deeper than the subject or self of mythology (...) However -- solely because of the collapse of the Kosmos -- the object of rationality (which was confined to sensorimotor flatland) was much less deep than the object of mythology (which was the Divine order, however crudely or anthropomorphically depicted). Thus, a much deeper subject confined its attention to a much shallower object. And there, in a nutshell, the combination of dignity and disaster that is the paradox of modernity: a deeper subject in a shallower world."
(--Ken Wilber, in The Marriage of Sense and Soul , p. 206)

It is a shallow deliberation trying to figure the worthiness and acceptability of human beings.

Same goes for God.

I've an idea: Let's start all over.

Now if only someone could make the determination where we'd start again, and who'd be allowed to start again, and how long anyone'd be permitted to continue in that place -- we'd all be grateful. Because, as you know, because we've been told, there's not enough room, money, food, or will to ensure everyone a basic, common, satisfactory life with the benefit of health care and education. Hmmm. I prefer to think that what's lacking is the ability to see truth and compassion and reality enough to go around.

If I share with you what I have I'll be ruined and reduced to nothing -- no clothes, no place to dwell, no body, no privilege to own what belongs to me alone.

God!

God?

Hello?

Not long ago I bought a lottery ticket. I grew frightened I might win.

A clean, deserted cave in the rock,

At the end of an obscure trail.

The stream is clear enough to

Reflect your shadow,

The cave quiet enough for you

To forget the world.

The radishes have sprouted,

And the grapes have leafed out.

Quite satisfied, I take a short nap.

Awakening, I see that the clouds have returned.

- Hueng Powoo (d.1565)

I don't buy them any longer.

I've noticed something about not having much money. Gratitude.

For what I have.

Is enough.

Barely.

Still.

OK.

Two very nice people have asked me to officiate at their wedding next Saturday. As a Notary Public in Maine I can do so. I've been thinking about what it means to say, "Yes."

"For all that has been...Thanks. For all that will be...Yes."

(--from Markings, 1968, Dag Hammarskjold)

I roll up the Day-At-A-Glance page from 22April2010 and toss it at the cat who claws door to mudroom scratching wood, watching me as he commits his blackmail, and cries to be let out. There is a mouse that climbs up the wood and rope hoisting the bird feeder and squeezes inside to sup on sunflowers in the dooryard. The cat sits under the feeder for hours at night. I won't let him out tonight. The world will play itself out with him inside. It will be an early bedtime.

The world is... the natural setting of, and field for, all my thoughts and all my explicit perceptions. Truth does not "inhabit" only "the inner man," or more accurately, there is no inner man, man is in the world, and only in the world does he know himself.
(-Maurice Merleau-Ponty, in Phenomenology of Perception, Preface, 1945)

We are in-the-world.

No world, no us. No outside, no inside. Just the world as itself in itself.

Mouse is in the feeder. Cat is in the house. I am soon in the bed.

What is lovely about being alive is that when the faucet lets fall a drop of water into a saucepan in the sink the sound fills the room and I am right there in its arrival even across the room.

When I opened the bird-feeder the other night the mouse peeked over the edge at me.

I wished it good eating.

Dwelling at the crossroads of abandon and abundance, there is no place to go.

A wandering monk was climbing a mountain alongside a stream, on his way to the Zen monastery at the top, when he noticed a vegetable leaf floating downstream from the direction of the monastery. He thought, "It is just a single leaf, but any place that would waste it cannot be very good," and he turned to go back down the mountain. Just then he saw a lone monk come running down the path, chasing after the floating leaf. Immediately the wandering monk decided to enroll in the monastery at the top of the mountain. - Hsueh-feng I-ts'un (822-908)

(From the Iona Community)

But to keep on going.

Love life; love earth.

Truth dwells at each intersection.

Some years from now it will be considered quaint that we planned trips, got in cars, trains, or planes with packed bags and time schedules. Time will come when in some act of intentional transportation of person we will immediately manifest and trans-form wherever desired. With a return passage, of course.

It will not be called time or space travel. It will be falling in to the inner (some say, parallel) universe residing just inside this one.

This existence is stranger and more wonderful than we can even imagine -- although imagination is the gateway to the realities rational mind and sensory touch cannot grasp.

God is nothing creating. And what nothing creates is the marriage of sense and soul transforming itself. We come to terms with what is itself-being in this world.

Meager food and a shabby house:

The marks of a scholar.

A gray gown and a black stick:

The dignity of a monk.

Is there anything else to remember?

I only open my eyes for the spring wind

And the autumn moon.

- Hamhur Kiwha (1376-1433)

Just as a cookie is eaten, destroyed in its presented form, yet transformed into the energy that types these words, so too is everything material married to what is the energetic continuation of exchange. We go on as a process of form being emptiness, and emptiness being form. There is nothing other than this, nothing other in this. Just exchange and continuation.

The Christian mystery story of the Incarnation, Death, and Resurrection is side by side with the Hindu God perceived as taking forms as the Creator (Brahma), the Sustainer (Vishnu) and the Destroyer (Shiva), is side by side with the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha.

These are not parallel universes that are somewhere else. (There is nowhere else). They are one within the other as no other within the one.

God is creating out of nothing. We are creation in God. God is with us creating nothing other with compassion. Don't look for God anywhere else. We will see God when we see what God is creating within us creating what creation is longing for.

In prison today we read Chittister and Rowen from Uncommon Gratitude. Later we spoke about geology and consciousness.

At breakfast we shared blueberry pancakes, fried eggs, sausage links, home fries, coffee, and tea with rye toast.

Nothing special.

God is good.

As is.

All.

Of it.

Good.

Earth Day.

This (free) film by Yann Arthus-Bertrand entitled "Home" is an Earth Day aesthetic watch. "The engine of life is linkage. Everything is linked. Nothing is self-sufficient."(At 9:35 in of 133 mins).

http://www.youtube.com/homeproject

Louise Erdrich writes:

Spring Evening on Blind Mountain

I won't drink wine tonight
I want to hear what is going on
not in my own head
but all around me.
I sit for hours
outside our house on Blind Mountain.
Below this scrap of yard
across the ragged old pasture,
two horses move
pulling grass into their mouths, tearing up
wildflowers by the roots.
They graze shoulder to shoulder.
Every night they lean together in sleep.
Up here, there is no one
for me to fail.
You are gone.
Our children are sleeping.
I don't even have to write this down. 

(Poem by Louise Erdrich)

Perhaps the deepest meditation is homecoming.

Today, look around.

See your home.

Be home.

When we are gone, there is only home, and we are not-other than this home.

Earth is home.

I am earth.

I am home.

First session of new series "Pilot to Practice." Eight of us. Looking at Benedictine experience with gratefulness. Come by next week.

By day the sun shines,

And the warrior in his armor shines.

By night the moon shines,

And the master shines in meditation.

But day and night

The one who is awake

Shines in the radiance of the spirit.

- Buddha in the Dhammapada

Often someone will go their whole life not realizing they're not talking to the person, they're talking to the alcohol in the person.

At times it feels like the whole country is drunk.

If you want to stop talking, that's ok; they've stopped listening to anything but the drink.

There were two ten minute silences during the gathering tonight.

Good speaking. Good listening.

Is there any other way to live?

No other

way

help each revere each.

No

w

here.

How ordinary are we willing to be?

It chagrins.

Nothing, or very little, in our culture, attracts. Some days it is more apparent. The newspapers with the huge advertisements. The web magazines full of frivolity. The news stories laboring simplistic contrasts. I am getting crankier.

I've wandered too far from hermitage.

Spiritual practitioners thrive in unpredictable conditions, testing and refining the inner qualities of heart and mind. Every situation becomes an opportunity to abandon judgment and opinions and to simply give complete attention to what is. Situations of inconvenience are terrific areas to discover, test, or develop your equanimity. How gracefully can you compromise in a negotiation? Does your mind remain balanced when you have to drive around the block three times to find a parking space? Are you at ease waiting for a flight that is six hours delayed? These inconveniences are opportunities to develop equanimity. Rather than shift the blame onto an institution, system, or person, one can develop the capacity to opt to rest within the experience of inconvenience.
- Shaila Catherine, "Equanimity in Every Bite" (Fall 2008) Tricycle

My inconvenience is the failure to accept everything as it is.

No, it's more than that.

Factor in my failure to accept I am as I am.

The banana with peanut butter and a side of green juice was just the thing.

Prelude to a nap.

Wind gusts under gray sky.

Solitude wandered away heedlessly.

This is my life.

Solitude. Community. Meditation. Prayer. Hospitality - (Saskia's better at this).

Now here, no where.

Pine Bark Bread

Grasping clouds
And standing on the edge of a rock,
You alone endured the cold
When other trees shed their leaves.
Ground into powder to be mixed
With worldly flavors,
You teach people unyielding integrity.
 - Hamhur Kiwha (1376-1433)

The Trappist monk in the video about Thomas Merton said, "We live in God." That's it. He said he didn't want to speak anything further about it.

There's a candle inside. Ananur left it for us. It is lit when the sacredness of conversation takes place in the wohnkuche. This is what life becomes.

After two hour meditation practice, when dishes are placed in sink, we return to the chapel/zendo to chant Compline. Night prayer ends with this prayer:

Let us pray.
Lord, we have celebrated today the mystery of the rising of Christ to new life. May we now rest in your peace, safe from all that could harm us, and rise again refreshed and joyful, to praise you throughout another day. We ask this through Christ our Lord.

Amen.

 The Salve Regina  is sung.

Enough said.

No thanks. I'm not having any.

Because struggling for riches and fame
Does not compare with leisure,
I retreated to live in the fog

And twilight for twenty-five years.
But a man of affairs visited
And offered me liquor.
My gown is wet, and I’m ashamed to look

At the green mountain.
- Suk Mumyong

Cookie, yes. Liquor, no.

Why?

I'd rather be who I am.

And you, who you are.

No special reason.

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