In July thoughts turn to ice cream and racism. I prefer ice cream. I leave racism where it belongs, namely, in the gutter where only men and women with heavy-shod politics stomp noisily for contributions from gutter funds spent effusively on things like race-divide and elite-unite themes. This would be better understood with an acronym: G.O.uP. or, Gratuitous Only-us Perseverating. The theme, stripped of the G.O.uP.'s finery called "Our New Clothes" really is: People of differing color or clan go away; People who fear people of differing color or clan gather around.

I've got to get back to the cushion.

"Meditation is sometimes described as an open presence that is highly aware of all inner and outer experiences without further evaluation or conceptualisation."
(--from a survey question by Liverpool John Moores University; "we are currently running an online survey investigating the relationship between meditation/mindfulness, eating attitudes, emotions and how we think." http://www.ljmu.ac.uk/mindfulness)

The President of the United States is a person of color. Some people are nervous about that fact. I'm not. I think integrity and fairness know every color, race, creed, ethnic origin, and chosen philosophy. It is up to each of us to act on what we know, not limit our actions and reactions to only what we fear.

Some of my best friends are people who fear and people who hope. For some there is no fact, only conspiracy. Nothing is ever what it is; it is always a plot by the upper or uppity class to take advantage of them. For others there is no hope, only doom. Their doom is mitigated by a shining light someone told them awaits on the other side of this valley of tears. They condemn anything that doesn't kiss-off this current existence for one written about, chapter and verse, in a book they like a great deal.

And then there are still others who prey upon the fears and hopes of all of the above. They are cynical and resourceful. They speak into radio microphones and look into TV cameras, and pen juicy columns all of which involves focusing on themselves (these cultural warriors) as the purveyors of fear and sole source of hope for the gnashing people so in dread or dream.

Let them eat non-fat seaweed chocolate and drink jewel-weed sweetened tea and crouch in hiding as time marches on and passes them by! My dear July-watching dog and cat will watch them parade away into their nether world.

Elsewhere, on a different topic, a Romanian singer dies and 40,000 attend her service.

"Church: No full burial service for Romanian singer"
(AP) – 4 days ago
BUCHAREST, Romania — The Romanian Orthodox Church said Friday as thousands mourned the death of a popular singer that it would not give her a full burial service because she committed suicide.
A single priest will perform a simple service for Madalina Manole in a church courtyard, the church said, because it considers suicide "a grave sin."
Some Romanians, including singer Tavi Colen, publicly urged the church to reconsider, saying Manole was a believer who suffered from depression, which should be treated as an illness.
It would break church law to give the singer a full service without written medical evidence that she was clinically depressed, church spokesman Constantin Stoica said.
Thousands paid their respects at a church before her burial later Friday in her hometown of Ploiesti, north of Bucharest.
Manole died Wednesday on her 43rd birthday after drinking a powerful insecticide. Her husband found her body.
Manole was of the country's best-loved artists, specializing in folk and popular music, often with romantic themes, and her death shocked Romanians.
Copyright © 2010 The Associated Press.

In her honor I listen to her songs. I give her full honors and blessings for her journey. And for her family and followers a wish ... of Peace.

The causes of any conflict lie in strong attachment to certain views, and the core of Buddha’s teaching is of great help here. All phenomena, in addition to being transient, arise and disappear according to a complex set of conditions. When we apply this truth to conflict, we give up the simplistic, black-and-white picture through which conflict is usually described and perpetuated. Views about the “good guys” and the “bad guys” simply do not correspond to the reality.
(--Zarko Andricevic, "Peace: How Realistic Is It?" in Tricycle)

Racism and non-inclusion do not conform to or confirm reality.

I prefer reality, not the factitious construct of minds enamored by illusory and fictitious exclusion.

Reality, I suspect, is not what we think it is. We've got to look closer.

We don't have to believe in reality. It is not a belief. It is the deepest, most grounded, and liberating nature of existence itself.

It is, let's say, that which remains when everything else falls away.

Just engage it.

As it is.

As we are.

We've a choice.

It seems facile to suggest we are forgetting truth. But it seems so much time and expense is spent fabricating expedient lies, distortions, and semblance of accuracy. From political parties to corporations, from pushers to pedophiles, from merchants to unfaithful spouses -- more and more energy is expended justifying and excusing what passes for truth, but is not even close to it.

Lies take us away from a genuine, authentic, and original relationship with life.

I know lies. I've lived some.

I know semblance and inauthenticity.

It is a coat too ratty and shoes too torn for civilized company.

The choice is to go unclothed and unshod for a while -- until the realization good clothes and sturdy shoes serve better.

What is good has been explained to you, man;
this is what the Lord asks of you:
only this, to act justly,
to love tenderly
and to walk humbly with your God.
(--from Micah 6:1-4,6-8, from the Jerusalem Bible)

Another translation has it:

You have been told, O man, what is good, and what the LORD requires of you: Only to do the right and to love goodness, and to walk humbly with your God. (New American Bible)

Reading Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali is engaging for July afternoons. The day clouds over. Freedom and allowing freedom feels the right idea.

Be soft in your practice. Think of the method as a fine silvery stream, not a raging waterfall. Follow the stream, have faith in its course. It will go its own way, meandering here, trickling there. It will find the grooves, the cracks, the crevices. Just follow it. Never let it out of your sight. It will take you.
- Sheng-yen

Truth has no purpose but to be itself.

Like our lives, just to be itself is sufficient.

Let each be completely themselves. Without dictating to another. But living wholly in good and true relationship. Not false rules and traditions. But reverential service and assistance.

When the Horses Gallop Away from Us, It's a Good Thing

I always find it strange—though I shouldn't—how creatures don't
care for us the way we care for them.
Horses, for instance, and chipmunks, and any bird you'd name.
Empathy's only a one-way street.

And that's all right, I've come to believe.
It sets us up for ultimate things,
and penultimate ones as well.
It's a good lesson to have in your pocket when the Call comes to
call.
(--Poem "When the Horses Gallop Away from Us, It's a Good Thing" by Charles Wright, from Sestets)

Hello?

Yes?

How can I help?

You.

Be.

You.

Rokpa scrapes gravel stones from alongside east/northeast side of barn where it meets glass doors of wohnkuche for cool terrain this hot July day.

Everything moves more slowly.

At 5:40AM he and I climbed into JOOTJE for a nearly 3 hour row in the Matinicus Peapod around bell buoys surrounding Camden Harbor. The swells mixed with outgoing tide and gathering breeze to keep us assuaged and undulant.

Saskia phones from the Mass-Turnpike en route home from Mom's after yesterday's wedding in New York State.

Conversations continue in wohnkuche as does silent sitting in meditation cabin so too guests staying in the Merton bookshed/retreat. The construction rests. Only one bare-of-cedar-shingles spot reminds there was something going on for most of a year. This is the first July in many dozens of years that no teaching, shopkeeping, child welfaring or studenting is taking place. There is only morning and evening holding between them the quiet revelation of ordinary tasks -- some volunteering at prison and nursing home, chauffeuring to worker's comp audits. The rest becomes non-obligatory time to read and ruminate, row and walk, converse and be silent.

It occurs from recent conversations that what we call "love" is welcoming and unconditional hospitality. This applies to ourselves and whatever arises in our psyches, body, and appears at our doorstep. In addition it applies to the presence, ideas, opinions, beliefs, and conditioning this world tosses our way. The fact that we have a choice to ignore what arrives only deepens the freedom that love suggests. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin said it this way: “To say ‘love’ is to say ‘liberty.’”

John O'Donohue in Anam Cara writes:

Nietzsche said that one of the best days in his life was the day he rebaptized all his negative qualities as his best qualities. In this kind of baptism, rather than banishing what is at first glance unwelcome, you bring it home to unity in your life. This is the slow and difficult work of self-retrieval. Every person has certain qualities or presences in their heart that are awkward, disturbing and negative. One of your sacred duties is to exercise kindness toward them. In a sense, you are called to be a loving parent to your delinquent qualities.

(--p.117, Anam Cara, by John O'Donohue)

These are the guests long waiting at our threshold for sanctuary.

It's a good time to receive them.

As it is for you.

And you.

And me.

Peace and...all is good!

Any identification is troublesome.

Rather say: "I am not this; I am not that."

Just do what you are doing, without commentary or classifying.

Zen mind is not Zen mind. That is, if you are attached to Zen mind, then you have a problem, and your way is very narrow. Throwing away Zen mind is correct Zen mind. Only keep the question, "What is the best way of helping other people?"
- Seung Sahn

By unconditionally welcoming.

Be radically hospitable.

Even if it kills you.

Let it.

Be.

Maggie said someone suggested she was in grief because she is losing her sight.

Walt, her husband, read a Carl Dennis poem:

A MAXIM

To live each day as if it might be the last
Is an injunction that Marcus Aurelius
Inscribes in his journal to remind himself
That he, too, however privileged, is mortal,
That whatever bounty is destined to reach him
Has reached him already, many times.
But if you take his maxim too literally
And devote your mornings to tinkering with your will,
Your afternoons and evenings to saying farewell
To friends and family, you’ll come to regret it.
Soon your lawyer won’t fit you into his schedule.
Soon your dear ones will hide in a closet
When they hear your heavy step on the porch.
And then your house will slide into disrepair.
If this is my last day, you’ll say to yourself,
Why waste time sealing drafts in the window frames
Or cleaning gutters or patching the driveway?
If you don’t want your heirs to curse the day
You first opened Marcus’s journals,
Take him simply to mean you should find an hour
Each day to pay a debt or forgive one,
Or write a letter of thanks or apology.
No shame in leaving behind some evidence
You were hoping to live beyond the moment.
No shame in a ticket to a concert seven months off,
Or, better yet, two tickets, as if you were hoping
To meet by then someone who’d love to join you,
Two seats near the front so you catch each note.

(Poem by Carl Dennis, in The New Yorker, June 7, 2010)

They have grown old together.

My travels from prison conversation to nursing home conversation is from eternity to infinity.

A thousand clouds and ten thousand streams,
In their midst lives an idle man,
In the daytime wandering over green mountains,
At night returning to sleep by the cliff.
Swiftly springs and autumns pass,
At peace and free from ties to the dusty world.
How pleasant with nothing to rely on,
Still as the waters of autumn rivers.
- Han-shan

Not only am I nowhere near home, I've never left it.

And old is not a word that has anything to do with time.

Come. Sit here in the front. Can you hear well?

You are evidence of something loving.

In the early hours of the morning I call your name.

92 Bonum est confiteri

1 It is a good thing to give thanks to the LORD, *
and to sing praises to your Name, O Most High;

2 To tell of your loving-kindness early in the morning *
and of your faithfulness in the night season;

3 On the psaltery, and on the lyre, *
and to the melody of the harp.

4 For you have made me glad by your acts, O LORD; *
and I shout for joy because of the works of your hands.

5 LORD, how great are your works! *
your thoughts are very deep.

6 The dullard does not know,
nor does the fool understand, *
that though the wicked grow like weeds,
and all the workers of iniquity flourish,

7 They flourish only to be destroyed for ever; *
but you, O LORD, are exalted for evermore.

8 For lo, your enemies, O LORD,
lo, your enemies shall perish, *
and all the workers of iniquity shall be scattered.

9 But my horn you have exalted like the horns of wild bulls; *
I am anointed with fresh oil.

10 My eyes also gloat over my enemies, *
and my ears rejoice to hear the doom of the wicked who
rise up against me.

11 The righteous shall flourish like a palm tree, *
and shall spread abroad like a cedar of Lebanon.

12 Those who are planted in the house of the LORD *
shall flourish in the courts of our God;

13 They shall still bear fruit in old age; *
they shall be green and succulent;

14 That they may show how upright the LORD is, *
my Rock, in whom there is no fault .
(--Psalm 92, from The Psalter or Psalms of David According to the use of The Episcopal Church, http://www.bcponline.org/

And you answer me.

In the stillness, light, and silence of your dwelling place.

Saskia brings me Cheryl's raspberries in honey-Greek yogurt where I sit on meditation cabin porch.

In the New York Times Opinion section Robert Wright, quoting Teilhard de Chardin, writes: “There need be no fear of enslavement or atrophy in a world so richly charged with charity.” Or, as he more aphoristically put it: “To say ‘love’ is to say ‘liberty.’”
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/07/13/with-liberty-and-connectivity-for-all/#more-56113

I find talk of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin's "Noosphere" as interesting today as I did in the 1960's reading his book The Phenomenon of Man (Le Phénomène Humain, 1955).

Wikipedia:

Noosphere (pronounced /ˈnoʊ.ɵsfɪər/; sometimes noösphere), according to the thought of Vladimir Vernadsky and Teilhard de Chardin, denotes the "sphere of human thought". The word is derived from the Greek νοῦς (nous "mind") + σφαῖρα (sphaira "sphere"), in lexical analogy to "atmosphere" and "biosphere".

In the original theory of Vernadsky, the noosphere is the third in a succession of phases of development of the Earth, after the geosphere (inanimate matter) and the biosphere (biological life). Just as the emergence of life fundamentally transformed the geosphere, the emergence of human cognition fundamentally transforms the biosphere. In contrast to the conceptions of the Gaia theorists, or the promoters of cyberspace, Vernadsky's noosphere emerges at the point where humankind, through the mastery of nuclear processes, begins to create resources through the transmutation of elements. It is also currently being researched as part of the Princeton Global Consciousness Project.^[1]

History of concept

For Teilhard, the noosphere emerges through and is constituted by the interaction of human minds. The noosphere has grown in step with the organization of the human mass in relation to itself as it populates the earth. As mankind organizes itself in more complex social networks, the higher the noosphere will grow in awareness. This is an extension of Teilhard's Law of Complexity/Consciousness, the law describing the nature of evolution in the universe. Teilhard argued that the noosphere is growing towards an even greater integration and unification, culminating in the Omega point, which he saw as the goal of history. The goal of history, then, is an apex of thought/consciousness.

One of the original aspects of the noosphere concept deals with evolution. Henri Bergson (1907) was one of the first to propose that evolution is 'creative' and cannot necessarily be explained solely by Darwinian natural selection. L'évolution créatrice is upheld, according to Bergson, by a constant vital force that animates life and fundamentally connects mind and body, an idea opposing the dualism of René Descartes. In 1923, C. Lloyd Morgan took this work further, elaborating on an 'emergent evolution' that could explain increasing complexity (including the evolution of mind). Morgan found that many of the most interesting changes in living things have been largely discontinuous with past evolution, and therefore did not necessarily take place through a gradual process of natural selection. Rather, evolution experiences jumps in complexity (such as the emergence of a self-reflective universe, or noosphere). Finally, the complexification of human cultures, particularly language, facilitated a quickening of evolution in which cultural evolution occurs more rapidly than biological evolution. Recent understanding of human ecosystems and of human impact on the biosphere have led to a link between the notion of sustainability with the "co-evolution" [Norgaard, 1994] and harmonization of cultural and biological evolution.

The resulting political system has been referred to as a noocracy.

American integral theorist Ken Wilber deals with this third evolution of the noosphere. In his work, Sex, Ecology, Spirituality (1995), he builds many of his arguments on the emergence of the noosphere and the continued emergence of further evolutionary structures.

The term Noöcene epoch refers to "how we manage and adapt to the immense amount of knowledge we’ve created." [1]

The noosphere concept of 'unification' was elaborated in popular science fiction by Julian May in the Galactic Milieu Series. It is also the reason Teilhard is often called the patron saint of the Internet.^[2

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noosphere

Robert Wright in his "Opinionator" piece adds:

Many others, far from thinking I’d gone off the deep end, encouraged me to venture beyond the shallows. Several recommended that I read the mystical Catholic theologian Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, who in the mid-20th century built a theology around the superorganism idea. He saw the emergence of a global brain (the “noosphere”) as part of God’s plan to lead humanity toward “Point Omega” — which, as best as I can make out from Teilhard’s dense, poetic writing, will be a kind of worldwide organic love blob. (Count me in!)

One commenter — the theologian Philip Hefner, who once wrote a pithy little book on Teilhard — suggested that a Teilhardian view could allay the fears of the DA06488s [Note: a responder to Wright's earlier piece] of the world, showing that we cells needn’t be enslaved or diminished by the superorganism. Teilhard, wrote Hefner, “saw that the evolution toward the interconnected brain is one pole of the dialectic, while the enhancement of the ‘cell’ is a co-equal pole… . One needs to have a metaphysic (or theology) that recognizes both elements of this dialectic. Perhaps you can write your next piece on this balancing of the two poles.”
(--from The New York Times, Opinionator Blog, A Gathering of Opinion From Around the Web, July 13, 2010, 9:00 PM, "With Liberty and Connectivity for All" By ROBERT WRIGHT)

Another responder to Wright adds an interesting point of view:

One of my favorite television series, dating back to the 90s, was a show called "Northern Exposure". And one of my favorite scenes from that series was one in which a character named Chris, a radio announcer, read the following Einstein quote over the airwaves, just before packing up one evening to head home, ending the show for that week:

"Strange is our situation here on Earth. Each of us comes for a short visit, not knowing why, yet sometimes seeming to divine a purpose. From the standpoint of daily life, however, there is one thing we do know: that man is here for the sake of other men -- above all for those upon whose smiles and well-being our own happiness depends."

And just as he closes up shop, the scene switches to a snapshot of all the characters in the series, taken at "The Brick", a favorite place to get together in the fictional town of Little Cicely Alaska. The camera pans over the snapshot, showing smiles, banter, friendships built up over years of meaningful personal exchanges, exchanges that the show used to highlight on a weekly basis.

The characters didn't spend hours "friending" each other over the internet, dropping little tidbits about daily activities. Instead they spent hours together face to face, having meaningful conversational exchanges. They didn't have dozens of what for all intents and purposes might be considered acquaintances, instead they had a handful of highly communicative relationships.

Whenever I see that scene now, I smile and find tears welling up in my eyes. Why? Because the art of meaningful face to face exchange seems to me something we're trading in more and more for alternate modes of new but shallow communication.

There was a study a few years back now about growing isolation in America, and the significant drop in true confidants had by people in general, with a sizable portion of the population now having few or none at all. It's natural to wonder if there's a correlation with the increase in these other more shallow modes of communication. I also read another study recently in "Scientific American" magazine about how a small number of meaningful conversations had throughout a day results in an increased sense of personal well being, while days spent in dropping tidbits do not.

And so I wonder as I did in my previous comments if instead of building a global brain, we aren't building a kind of global labyrinth instead, increasing social isolation in a significant sense. Daedalus was one smart cookie, but he constructed the labyrinth in such a way that even he himself found it barely possible to escape the thing once dropped inside. What would an episode of "Northern Exposure 2010" feel like I wonder? I bet each week the townsfolk of Little Cicely would be glued to their cell phones and social networks, and I'd be watching some other show instead.
Scott Inglett
Rochester, MN
July 14th, 2010, 10:00 am, NYT

I marvel how all these thoughts come to the porch of meetingbrook's hermitage in Maine. Inside, a candle burns before the icon depicting Jesus' liberating visit to our first parents (however you understand them) after his crucifixion but before his resurrection. The icon sits in this non-winter season on the black wood stove in the corner. Scent of incense left here by a visitor many years ago and lighted an hour ago permeates the chapel/zendo.

We are invited by Paul to have that mind in us that was in Christ Jesus. Buddhist thinkers suggest there is only mind, Big Mind, for us to consider. Others say that Consciousness is all there is. If so, those of us denying anyone freedom or acting unlovingly to self or others are, literally, out of our mind.

Some make the supposition that being of one mind means the absence of freedom or the end of individuality. I prefer not to think that way.

I think we will become like the individual in Hsueh-feng Hui-k'ung's verse -- sketchers of dream -- artists of sight willing to give each its particular appearance, call each its particular name, allow each its particular reverence.

All alone, in any place,
One can achieve simplicity:
An old man on verdant cliffs
Among layered peaks.
Truly the view of these
Streams and mountains
Resembles a dream,
So on the contrary you should
Take ink and water
And sketch the streams and mountains.
- Hsueh-feng Hui-k'ung (1153)

It's a curious world we live in.

We need to dwell in our right mind.

A fresh simplicity: mind me; mind yourself.

I'm Catholic in the same way I am just shy of 6'3". It's just a fact. I don't give up being nearly 6'3" because I can't reach some things. Nor do I say I am no longer 6'3" because I no longer believe in such a height. And I certainly do not allow someone to say I can no longer be 6'3" because other people of other heights hold certain beliefs about conforming factors of height that my height seems to stand outside of.

I am a discovering Catholic -- one willing to transcend yet include what history, tradition, and scriptural exegesis plus hermeneutic have posited up til now. It is at this place, at the Now-Here of encounter experience, that originating Catholicity begins again the ever-present contemplation, conversation, and correspondence of each individual 'I Am' with 'What Is' in the geography of 'Being Here.'

We are invited to be what we are to become by abandoning everything and remaining open within an inchoate incarnate instantiation of emerging awareness centered in this immediate moment with all it's revelatory realization.

I am not someone who belongs to a belief or organization. I am the inclusion and interiority of each original intuition within the origination experience at core of what in time becomes belief organized. I am as I am inside and outside the belief or organization -- fully appreciative of, but not easily impressed by, artificial borders and boundaries based on criteria external or internal to the very factual reality of the individual.

If Christ is, I am. If I am, you are. If you are, we share the simple reality of being-in-the-world with one another with the One we call God, and with the very earth, cosmos, and mystery of existence. The only illusion is not to be what we are.

The old Catholic ceremony of Benediction was among the most beautiful acts of devotion that had evolved in the Church over the centuries. It was a triumph of ceremonial craft that blended light and incense and chant, a sweet celebration of Christ's continual union with His Church by his bodily presence.
(pg. 79, in Vatican, A Novel, by Malachi Martin, c.1986)

Rules are usually clasped tightly by those who cannot abide the immense potentiality and infinite possibilities open before us. We seem to be more inclined to limit and sanction, exclude and divide -- rather than seeing the world as a transparent portal of access to every extension of space and duration of time. It's something we're unfamiliar with -- the singularity of throughness -- the way we are diverse and diffuse, limited only by our limited perceptions, beliefs, and lack of faith.

He was in the world, and the world was made through Him, and the world did not know Him.
(John 1:10, New American Standard Bible c.1995)

To know is to resound and permeate, without reservation or restriction, what is real. Perhaps we do not 'know' God because we do not resound and permeate, unreservedly and unrestrictedly, the revelation and presence of what is most real in our midst.

To be unstained in all environments is called no-thought…If you stop thinking of the myriad things, and cast aside all thoughts, as soon as one instant of thought is cut off, you will be reborn in another realm. The Dharma of no-thought means: even though you see all things, you do not attach to them, but, always keeping your own nature pure, cause the six thieves of the senses to exit through the six gates. Even though you are in the midst of the six dusts, you do not stand apart from them, yet are not stained by them, and are free to come and go.
(- Hui Neng)

Of course, saying I am Roman Catholic (perhaps, 'Ronin' Catholic) includes being also Buddhist, Jewish, Hindu, Muslim, Confucian, Taoist, Jain, Shinto, Pagan, and the innumerable variations, Christian and Neo-Pagan, Atheistic and Agnostic, Theistic and Deist, Secular Humanist and Scientific Skeptic, Shamanic Visionary and none of the above -- that the world in all its multiplicity and grand nascence/nescience offers as paths to the mysterium tremendum et fascinans.

My root tradition offers me a strong meditation:

'Those who humble themselves will be exalted' is not a promise of future prestige to those who have no prestige now or to those who have given up all reliance upon prestige. It is the promise that they will no longer be treated as inferior but will receive full recognition as human beings. Just as the poor are not promised wealth but the full satisfaction of their needs -- no one shall be in want; so the little ones are not promised status and prestige but the full recognition of their dignity as human beings. To achieve this a total and radical re-structuring of society would be required.

The kingdom of God,then, will be a society in which there will be no prestige and no status, no division of people into inferior and superior. Everyone will be loved and respected, not because of his education or wealth or ancestry or authority or rank or virtue or other achievements, but because he like everybody else is a person. Some will find it very difficult to imagine what such a life would be like but the 'babes' who have never had any of the privileges of status and those who have not valued it will find it very easy to appreciate the fulfillment that life in such a society would bring. Those who could not bear to have beggars, former prostitutes, servants, women and children treated as their equals, who could not live without feeling superior to a least some people, would simply not be at home in God's kingdom as Jesus understood it. They would want to exclude themselves from it.
(--from pp. 57-58, Ch.8, THE KINGDOM AND PRESTIGE, in Jesus Before Christianity, by Albert Nolan, c.1978)

I long for such a home.
There -- (wherever 'there' might be).

Or, here.

Where you and I mostly long to be.

Completely with.

What is.

Here.

Benedict told his monks to live in God.

So he and they created monasteries.

Today, the whole world is a monastery. And I live in a small hermitage off to the side.

Buddhas know beings' minds,
Their natures each different;
According to what they need to be freed,
Thus do the Buddhas teach.
To the stingy they praise giving,
To the immoral they praise ethics;
To the angry they praise tolerance,
To the lazy they praise effort.
- Avatamsaka Sutra

Saskia takes dog out through barn for final pee. In the morning he'll be 60lb ballast aft for our 2.5 hour row at 5:55am in peapod.

The stars are out, she said. The long rain has ended.

I'm grateful for Benedict.

He said, "Listen."

Do.

We need a conversation. I want us to talk about what it might be that causes us to want to kill and eliminate anyone who disagrees with us. Why is war so attractive to us?

General George Casey, the Chief of Staff of the Army, said today the United States could face another "decade or so" of persistent conflict in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In two months, the U.S. will have been at war in Afghanistan for nine years.

The four-star general said the U.S. military moved beyond conventional warfare in Iraq and Afghanistan "long ago," and that the focus is now on the people. Casey highlighted job, education and economic growth as essential to success in Iraq and Afghanistan.

When asked if enemies of the U.S. have to be a part of the reconciliation process for it to be considered a success, Casey said that is a "matter of debate," but that enemies have to be convinced they will lose.

(--from, Casey: U.S. Could be at War Another Decade, CBS News, http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20010184-503544.html)

War is ugly and insane. It is costly and dangerous. It disfigures and mutilates. War terrifies and seems to be what appeals to us so much we are loath not to be at war. It is truly a confounding consideration why we relish war.

Chris Hedges writes:

War and conflict have marked most of my adult life. I have been in ambushes on desolate stretches of Central American roads, locked in unnerving firefights in the marshes in southern Iraq, imprisoned in the Sudan, beaten by Saudi military police, deported from Libya and Iran, captured and held for a week by Iraqi Republican Guards, strafed by Russian Mig-21s in central Bosnia, shot at by Serb snipers and shelled with deafening rounds of artillery in Sarajevo that threw out thousands of deadly bits of iron fragments. I have seen too much of violent death. I have tasted too much of my own fear. I have painful memories that lie buried most of the time. It is never easy when they surface.

And yet there is a part of me that remains nostalgic for war's simplicity and high. The enduring attraction of war is this: Even with its destruction and carnage it gives us what we all long for in life. It gives us purpose, meaning, a reason for living. Only when we are in the midst of conflict does the shallowness and vapidness of our lives become apparent. Trivia dominates our conversations and increasingly our news. And war is an enticing elixir. It gives us resolve, a cause. It allows us to be noble. And those that have the least meaning in their lives-the impoverished refugees in Gaza, the disenfranchised North African immigrants in France, even the lost legions of youth that live in the splendid indolence and safety of the industrialized world-are all susceptible to war's appeal.
( --from "War is a force that gives us meaning", by Chris Hedges, Amnesty International NOW magazine, Winter 2002, http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/War_Peace/War_Gives_Meaning.html)

Conversation is what is missing.

I think we do not know how to have a conversation. I think conversation is more frightening than war.

Conversation is also more attractive and more important than war.

Conversation is the antidote to war.

That's why we fear conversation.

Each person is the daily recipient of new thoughts and unexpected feelings. yet so often in our social encounters and in the way we have grown used to describing ourselves, these thoughts and feelings are not welcome and remain unexpressed. This is disappointing in view of the fact that the deepest things that we have inherited have come down to us across the bridges of meaningful conversation. The Celtic tradition was primarily an oral tradition. The stories, poems, and prayers lived for centuries in the memory and voice of the people. They were learned by heart. The companionship and presence of such rich harvest of memory helped poeticize their perception and conversation. Without the presence of memory conversation becomes amnesic, repetitive, and superficial. Perception is most powerful when it engages both memory and experience. This empowers conversation to become real exploration. Real conversation has an unpredictability, danger, and resonance; it can take a turn anywhere and constantly borders on the unexpected and on the unknown. Real conversation is not a construct of the solitary ego; it creates community. So much of our modern talk is like a spider weaving a web of language maniacally outside itself. Our parallel monologues with their staccato stutter only reinforce our isolation. There is so little patience for the silence from which words emerge or for the silence that is between words and within them. When we forget or neglect this silence, we empty our world of its secret and subtle presences. We can no longer converse with the dead or the absent.

(pp. 110-111, in section 'Ascetic Solitude', in John O'Donohue's Anam Cara, A Book of Celtic Wisdom, c.1997)

When we cease speaking with one another we are inclined to punch, shoot, and kill one another.

There's one more thing that has to be considered.

Silence.

Silence -- real silence, not tense festering non-communication -- allows everything into it.

Silence -- real silence -- allows everything to be merely and delightedly itself.

Real silence -- is the middle name of peace, God, and the mother of all being.

So, love your mother. Love God. Love peace.

Learn from silence to practice silence.

Want it.

Be it.

Silence is an especially good word and practice that mothers our creation.

I honor my mother's birth.

EVE, MOTHER'S BIRTH
(for Catherine)

When my mother was born
whole reaches of universe came to be

when she died, so many coffee cups
beer glasses stay dry in cupboards --

still the universe drinks
without pouring a single drop

from what is not open.
When mothers are born

every point of light spouts itself
over and open over again

a wondrous thirst never slaked,
each word mothers our creation.

(wfh, 8July2002)

I wrote this on the eve of her birthday in 2002. She died in 1981.

It holds true for me today, that "each word mothers our creation."

You are within these words -- Thanks Mom!

Do we co-originate reality?

We usually think of 'reality' as fixed and static, of-a-whole. the unchanging beingness of what is, God's will already and always done.

Parmenides of Elea (5th C. BCE) wrote:

VΙΙΙ
One path only is left for us to speak of, namely, that It is. In it are very many tokens that what is, is uncreated and indestructible, alone, complete, immovable and without end. Nor was it ever, nor will it be; for5 now it is, all at once, a continuous one. For what kind of origin for it. will you look for ? In what way and from what source could it have drawn its increase ? I shall not let thee say nor think that it came from what is not; for it can neither be
thought nor uttered that what is not is. And, if it came from
10 nothing, what need could have made it arise later rather than sooner ? Therefore must it either be altogether or be not at all. Nor will the force of truth suffer aught to arise besides itself from that which in any way is. Wherefore, Justice does
not loose her fetters and let anything come into being or pass
15 away, but holds it fast. ʺ Is it or is it not ? ʺ Surely it is adjudged, as it needs must be, that we are to set aside the one way as unthinkable and nameless (for it is no true way), and that the other path is real and true. How, then, can what is be going to be in the future ?
20 Or how could it come into being ? If it came into being, it is not; nor is it if it is going to be in the future. Thus is becoming extinguished and passing away not to be heard of Nor is it divisible, since it is all alike, and there is no more of it in one place than in another, to hinder it from holding together, nor less of it, but everything is full of what is.
25 Wherefore all holds together; for what is; is in contact with what is. Moreover, it is immovable in the bonds of mighty chains, without beginning and without end; since coming into being and passing away have been driven afar, and true belief has cast them away. It is the same, and it rests in the self-same place, abiding in itself.

(--from Poem of Parmenides : on nature, http://philoctetes.free.fr/parmenides.pdf

Where, exactly, do you think love is?

Ego and insane thinking cast lots and divide lines putting love only in columns of yes and no, here or not here. Whereas the fact of the matter is that there (or here) is only love. Mind fictionalizes love into discrete and distinct places while exiling it from places deemed off limits. These actions are the delusions of an insane desire to label and control the spirit of love -- which is not possible.

Love is looking out for you -- and only sees itself --as you are -- seeing love.

I used to think I had something to say. Now I see I am nothing being said.

Let's call it lending safe uncertainty. By extending presence as modeling and mentoring to one another we join with each to deepen mores and minds toward a co-originality creating what is true, fair, and just.

In other words, we don't want rules, we want continuous engagement with what is unfolding with innumerable immeasurable possibilities.

One who gives rise to the awakened mind should know that what is called a self or person, a living being or a life span, is not so in essence but only in concept. That names self, person, living being, or life span are names only. Subhuti, you should know that all things of the world are like this, and you should have confidence in their essence without names.
- Diamond Sutra

It is possible we know little or nothing about other cultures aside from caricature and innuendo. The Afghan people are not in our tv commercial demographics and thus are unstudied and irrelevant to the money in our culture. And without celebrities entering courtrooms or treatment programs for sex use or drug abuse there's not much interest on the part of gag reporters to file stories from so far away.

Barking

The moon comes up.
The moon goes down.
This is to inform you
that I didn’t die young.
Age swept past me
but I caught up.
Spring has begun here and each day
brings new birds up from Mexico.
Yesterday I got a call from the outside
world but I said no in thunder.
I was a dog on a short chain
and now there’s no chain.
(--Poem by Jim Harrison in Poetry, September 2008).

The Great Blue Heron standing in the mud flats of the Royal River in Yarmouth Maine this morning was not bothered by the Border Collie chasing stick into the water down the ancient launching cement ramp not 20 yards from the observation tower of his bending water gaze.

The woman with the curiously contoured straw hat said it covered all the important spots -- like the tops of her ears.

Boatyards in July are desolate craters on a landscape of abandoned stands and keel blocks.

It is July. Today, hot. And I think: War is insane. But everyone already knows that. What we don't know is what to do with that knowledge. There you have it. There are no theories. There are no answers. The statement, "War is insane," is a stupid statement.

On That Side, beyond the clouds,
The mountain is blue-green as jade
The white clouds on the mountain
Are whiter than white
From the spring on the mountain,
Drop after drop
Who knows how to see the face
In the white clouds?
Clear skies and rain have their times,
They're like lightening.
Who knows how to listen to the
Sound of this spring?
It flows on without stopping
Through thousands
And thousands of turns
The moment before thought is
Already wrong
To try to say anything further
Is embarrassing.
- T'aego (1301-1382)

I'd rather talk about something I know. But I don't know anything. So have nothing to say. Today.

It is July. It was hot. After rain, it cools. And war is insane. I know this. Everyone knows this.

I sorrow for my stupidity. For prolonging war. For the men and women who go to war. Who don't come home. Not as who they were.

I died for beauty, but was scarce
by Emily Dickinson

I died for beauty, but was scarce
Adjusted in the tomb,
When one who died for truth was lain
In an adjoining room.

He questioned softly why I failed?
“For beauty,” I replied.
“And I for truth,—the two are one;
We brethren are,” he said.

And so, as kinsmen met a night,
We talked between the rooms,
Until the moss had reached our lips,
And covered up our names.

Kahlil Gibran's words at evening conversation spoke of "Life, Love, and Beauty." Someone else might use the words "Father, Son, and Holy Spirit." There's something in the three that reaches out to us.

Some keep the Sabbath going to Church --
I keep it, staying at Home --
With a Bobolink for a Chorister --
And an Orchard, for a Dome --

Some keep the Sabbath in Surplice --
I just wear my Wings --
And instead of tolling the Bell, for Church,
Our little Sexton -- sings.

God preaches, a noted Clergyman --
And the sermon is never long,
So instead of getting to Heaven, at least --
I'm going, all along!

(Poem by Emily Dickenson)

I can go along with that.

Along with the bell ending meditation, the birds at dusk, and the pungent smell of the dead porcupine up in the woods, I find my solution to war.

Unlike Billy Collins, I've not made love to Emily Dickenson in a poem.

When I sit at times I think: God is what is taking place before me here."

God is before me.

God is here.

Subhuti, do not think that when one gives rise to the highest, most fulfilled, awakened mind one needs to see all objects of mind as nonexistent, cut off from life. Please do not think in that way. One who gives rise to the awakened mind does not deny objects or say that they are nonexistent.
- Diamond Sutra

I like the challenge of those who say that before and beyond my ego is God. I like Ram Das saying there are only two beings in the world: God, and what remains of my ego. It is thought-provoking to consider what is without making 'God' into any object of thought or any construct of imagination.

God is God. Nothing more, nothing less.

Psalm 39 (40)

My food is to do the will of my Father, who sent me.
I waited, I waited for the Lord;
and he heard me.

He heard my voice when I cried,
he led me from the pit of misery,
he led me from the mire of filth.

He set my feet on firm rock,
he steadied my footsteps.

He filled my being with a new song,
a song to the Lord.

Many shall see what has happened, and trust,
and honour the Lord.

Happy the man who puts his trust in the Lord,
who pays no heed to the proud,
who pays no heed to liars.

Many are your wonders, O Lord my God,
and great is your care for us:
there is no-one like you.

If I wanted to tell the things you have done for us –
they are too many to count.

You have refused sacrifice and oblation,
but you have opened your ears to me.

You have refused burnt-offerings, even for sin –
so I said “I am coming.

The books of scripture have written of me.
It is your will, my God, that I wish to perform:
your law is next to my heart.”

Mercy, compassion, acceptance -- yes!

Judgment, punishment, retribution -- no!

Sitting in zendo this afternoon with white dog on porch and Tibetan incense sent as healing prayer to Halifax Nova Scotia where David S. in hospital after stroke does not prepare for talk he was to give three days ahead in Camden Maine. I bow to the calligraphies he stroked for us. Brush stroke and paralyzing stroke in one waft of grateful hope for him and his recovery.

On Eagle-Watched Shores

No debris. No bodies. Not yet. Fishermen
on and near the bite of raw water, Down East
harvesters of deep and shallow sea, or
raking in low tides; they are not a passing
tale or lore of days gone by, but today’s men
filling grocery sea-shelves as scallop
dragger sinks along with all men aboard;
so close to rockweed, eagle-watched shores charted
near the Black River’s flow to Fundy or
a descent in Cobscook Bay’s ice-water
as sister-towns Eastport, Lubec mourn with
kin Campobello, Deer Island, Grand Manan;
two more, four more, six more; eight more; too many
overdue for supper from back then to today.

Stranded at the threshold between you and
them, below the brink of “almost made it”
they rest confined in their hull of clothes – we
weep and the fishermen do not return
home to communities who look for a
boat called The Whole Family – Bottom Basher,
Miss Priss, All American, that sends the
message from below in debris and fishing
crates that break the surface. Sometimes it’s him
floating alone with no tale to tell of
the others; of good men dragging hard wares,
against hard rocky sea beds, busted apart
hard as weighty engines take her down too fast.

(···Poem in Bangor Daily News, 7/4/10 by Frances Drabick who wrote this poem in support for plans to raise a Lubec Memorial for fishermen who have lost their lives to the sea.)

My row this morning on glazed Penobscot Bay took me as far as the wealthy man's mansion toward Rockport. A porpoise came as surprise to surface to starboard and lingered there in the sound of its breath as I held my oars still. It slid below where things beyond my understanding take place.

My morning row is like a monastery. Loons call. Buoys toll. Sea holds. Gregorian chant in my ear.

Prayer is all about.

For each.
A never-ending newness.

Beginning before and beyond us.

Birth.

Itself.

Two porpoises, one harbor seal, some ducks, an osprey, and a loon.

Morning row at 5:55AM.

They say it is the 4th of July. Kudos.

True freedom has nothing to do with military campaigns or enemies slain.

It involves sitting quietly inside bird song, inside the day, inside God.

Two hours on Penobscot Bay, a quarter left on red and white channel buoy, another hour with the Quakers, nothing left to say.

At evening sitting practice three of us recount things just as they are.

What?

Purifying our self direction,
Our emotions, and behaviors
In all endeavors, one grows
In understanding of the Way.
But our individual abilities vary
And the exalted Way has many
Different rules.
To students of Tao,
This sincere forewarning:
Only with a clear, honest spirit
Can we begin meaningful learning.
With an unsullied heart we may
Even move the immortals.
Debasing the Way,
Not even a heaven forgives us.
- Loy Ching-Yuen (1873-1960)

I honor those who serve this country more than words.

In life, in death, in themselves.

If you would be enlightened, alight nowhere.

To find yourself in the midde of things is to be where God dwells -- between you and me -- the creating heaven of earth.

Therefore, love God yourself one another, be here-with midst.

Intermediation.

Happy Canada Day!

One mouse showed up in the bow of the peapod. He'd been under the floorboard of the overturned boat named after Anna's grandmother, Jootje. Pine Tar and Linseed Oil. Turpentine. Bottom paint. The mouse on the keelson wondered.

We all wonder -- how do I live here? How do I get out of here? How much time have I left? Before we leave the Dodge Mountain rutted driveway we overturn the boat again. A chance to exit. To start a new life. To mourn the loss of another temporary residence.

The shade of noble trees
Spreads in all directions
Below the trees a tiny
Hut is perfectly secluded
Beyond the sound of cart
Or horse or sign of human tracks
All day behind my door
I sit alone cross-legged.

-- Han-Shan Te-Ching (1546-1623)

Anna asks us to steward Jootje, her 15'6" peapod. We load it up after sprucing her up and move it to Camden Harbor and its temporary home at the head of the harbor. Anna and Saskia go for an inaugeral row.

Genpo Roshi writes:

The Middle way excludes nothing, and becoming stuck is the only way we detour from the Path. So "don't alight anywhere" is a good motto to follow. Buddha taught another important guideline for following the Middle Way. He said, "Be a light unto yourself." When we are a light unto ourselves, we take responsibility for our practice. Instead of trusting in an authority outside of ourselves, we place our trust in our own experience. We pay attention to whatever our experience is and embrace it -- but without clinging. We don't try to hold on to it, and we don't try to push it away; we just let it be. Everything is allowed to simply come and go of its own accord. All of our thoughts, emotions, understandings, and realizations are like bubbles, arising one moment and disappearing in the next moment. Not grasping or resisting, we walk the Middle Way.

(-- p.157, ch.27, The Middle Way, in his The Path of the Human Being, Zen Teachings on the Boddhisattva Way, by Dennis Genpo Merzel)

The mouse will be telling himself that things change.

You've got to keep moving.

We stand and talk with man who has stopped treatment for brain tumor. He is cheerful. Invites us to visit him on island he keeps.

We will be stewarding a 15' Matinicus Island peapod for boatbuilder living currently in midwest. It all happened suddenly, after Sunday Evening Practice, fortuitously.

We investigate dock space at head of harbor. It looks good.

Living alone
In the shade
Of a remote mountain,
I have you for my companion
Now the storm has passed,
Moon of the winter night.
- Saigyo

At meetingbrook we live alone together. Everyone is alone, really. Relationships help, community helps. But at beginning and at end we are alone. The gift is to be alone together.

It helps generously.

No beginning,
No end.
Our mind
is born and dies:
The emptiness of emptiness!
--Ikkyu, (1394-1481)

Tomorrow is the honoring of Saints Peter and Paul. It was on 29June1996 we opened the shop at the harbor. Fourteen years later we return to the harbor with rowing peapod to attend anonymously the liturgical life of tides and their acolytes.

We told the man, thin and more unsteady now, we'll wave and stop in time to time. His smile portended delight, a prolepsis of transition slacking and ebbing, the quiet narrative of distant horn in fog and mist up and down the coast.

If at the end of our journey
There is no final
Resting place,
Then we need not fear
Losing our Way.

--Ikkyu

Rest awhile, friend.

Then, push off again.

What does Jesus have against goodbyes?

Another said, ‘I will follow you, sir, but first let me go and say goodbye to my people at home.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Once the hand is laid on the plough, no one who looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.’
(--Luke9:62)

Even on the cross he says, "There's your mum; take her home." Jesus' mother is not recorded making reply. "Ta!" and gone.

Letting Go
The spiritual journey, then, is a journey of detachment, a process of learning how to let go. All of our problems, miseries, and unhappiness are caused by fixation—latching onto things and not being able to release them. First we have to let go of fixation on material things. This does not necessarily mean jettisoning all our material possessions, but it implies that we should not look to material things for lasting happiness. Normally, our position in life, our family, our standing in the community, and so forth, are perceived to be the source of our happiness. This perspective has to be reversed, according to spiritual teachings, by relinquishing our fixation on material things.

Letting go of fixation is effectively a process of learning to be free, because every time we let go of something, we become free of it. Whatever we fixate upon limits us because fixation makes us dependent upon something other than ourselves. Each time we let go of something, we experience another level of freedom.
(--from Letting Go of Spiritual Experience, By Traleg Kyabgon Rinpoche, Tricycle, http://www.tricycle.com/node/32401?offer=dharma.

Freedom has nothing.

What's left to lose?

As I was walking past, I heard a priest in Castine tell someone he wished he could find a way of marketing and communicating that the church is more than about rules -- but is about something of deep personal value.

They were good words, I told him. He was surprised, perhaps, I overheard and passed on to him my approval of his desire.

But he can't. There is no marketing authentic individual realization of our own deepest nature.

You can't market what is not there.

What is most personal is free...

Empty.

And gone.