We forget we are better than we think. We forget because forgetting is easy. We think we have to kill and eliminate those we call "enemy."

Rather remember this:

It is tragic. People have been deluded for so long. They do not recognize that their own minds are the true Buddha. They do not recognize that their own natures are the true dharma. They want to search for the dharma, yet they still look far away for the holy ones. They want to search for the Buddha, yet they will not observe their own minds. If they aspire to the path of Buddhahood while obstinately holding to their feeling that the Buddha is outside the mind or the dharma is outside the nature, then, even though they pass through kalpas as numerous as dust motes, burning their bodies, ….it is like trying to make rice by boiling sand—it will only add to their tribulation. If they would only understand their own minds, then, without searching, approaches to the dharma as numerous as the sands of the Ganges and uncountable subtle meaning would all be understood.

- Chinul (1158-1210)

August 6th 1945 Atomic-Bomb dropped, 130,000 dead in Hiroshima.

August 9th 1945, Atomic-Bomb dropped, 70,000 dead in Nagasaki.

(- casualty numbers from Greg Mitchell. He also co-authored two books with Robert Jay Lifton, Hiroshima in America and Who Owns Death?, and was chief adviser to the award-winning film, Original Child Bomb. {Huff Post,http://www.huffingtonpost.com/greg-mitchell/how-press-censorship-hid_b_675106.html})

Someone conceived of the bomb. Someone built it. Someone tested it. Someone decided to use it against Japan. Someone flew the plane. Someone watched it explode. Someone attended the casualties. Someone remembers what happened. Someone considers what it means.

If truth and being belong so closely together as tradition has always held since Parmenides, then the original meaning of truth must also be obtainable from the analysis of Dasein. The common definition of truth as adequatio rei et intellectus does not manage to point to an equality or similarity between subject and object or between ideal judgement content and fact, through which speaking of an agreement can be justified. The assertion states something of the thing: it is the same thing of which something is taken to be true and of which something is stated. Truth is equivalent with being true, and that means being revealing (αλήθεια—revealedness). It pertains thus originally to Dasein. Only in a derived manner is revealedness of beings in-the-world to be designated as truth. This is because of Dasein’s openness: it is in the truth. Likewise, however, — in its deterioration — it is in falsity when covered over by idle talk, curiosity, and ambiguity.

( --from p.61, Martin Heidegger’s Existential Philosophy, by Edith Stein, Translation by Mette Lebech, Department of Philosophy, National University of Ireland, Maynooth. From: ‘Martin Heideggers Existentialphilosophie’, in Edith Stein, Endliches und Ewiges Sein. Versuch eines Aufstiegs zum Sinn des Seins, Gesamtausgabe, bd. 11/12 (Freiburg: Herder, 2006), ‘Anhang’, pp. 445–500, in MAYNOOTH PHILOSOPHICAL PAPERS ISSUE 4, (2007) http://philosophy.nuim.ie/documents/FinalMPP20071.pdf

Someone thinks about life and death. Someone wonders what is the best way to live. Someone realizes that what has taken place is both fate and faith.

‘Only a being which, in its being, is essentially futural so that it is free for its death and can let itself be thrown back upon its factual “there” by shattering itself against death, that is, only a being which, as futural, is equiprimordially having-been, can, by handing down the inherited possibility, take over the own thrownness and instantaneously be for “its time”. Only authentic temporality which at the same time is finite makes something like fate, that is to say, authentic historicality, possible.’49
‘Repeating is explicit handing down, that is to say, the going back to the possibilities of the Dasein that has-been­-there.’50 It allows not only a returning to what was previously real. ‘It does not abandon itself to that which is past, nor does it aim at progress. Both are indifferent to authentic existence in the moment.’[51]
In being-with others Dasein has part in the destiny of the community. Fate and destiny are being-towards-death. Thus all history has its gravity in the future, which only inauthentic historicality covers up.
The innerworldly present-at-hand is historical not only insofar as it is in the world, but insofar as something happens to it (which is fundamentally different compared to natural events). In the inauthentic sense of everyday concern the distracted Dasein collects its life from these particular happenings. In the authentic being of resoluteness it lives in its fate and in faithfulness to its own self.
(p.67, Stein, Ibid)

At 4:55AM in zendo there is scarce light. I sit in the recollection of 65 years ago. I am one day older. In the year up to 1945 someone looked at parent's faces and knew little of the world that was desolate and dangerous with war and mechanical death.

Leaves cup in sudden updraft.

Rain washes the morning.

I am still.

Still I know nearly nothing.

And little of the world.

After morning sitting, lovely hike.

Seeing lake and ocean from Maidencliff on Megunticook Mountain.

I am makeshift;

Lean-to of body,

A few sticks of bone;

But my unfinished life

Is part of the world,

Part of the day

My eyes borrow.

(--2nd stanza, from poem Temporary Structure, by Thomas Bolt)

After evening sitting we row harbor at dusk, seeing mountains from water as we round island.

I am grateful for this birth.

I'll have two eggs, coffee, and rye toast.

Happy those servants whom the master finds awake when he comes. I tell you solemnly, he will put on an apron, sit them down at table and wait on them.
(--from Luke 12:32-48)

I watch. I gaze into the emptiness of everyday life and see the fullness of no other place, nothing else to do. It is all right here. God, one might suggest, is here. Where is there to go?

Do not say that I'll depart tomorrow
because even today I still arrive.
(--from poem, Call Me by My True Names, by Thich Nhat Hanh)

We can't say we've been there. It would be a lie. No. We are only always just arriving. Hello! Is there room in this inn? Will you wake me at 6AM?

In my pot nothing
But the wind's deep moan,
For company only a
Staff of wisteria vine;
Last night we chatted
And laughed till all hours;
The empty sky listened with a cold heart.
- Muso Soseki (1275–1351)

If the cosmos is cold, dark, and empty, then we are cold, dark, and empty. But with a difference. We have the capacity to make of the cosmos a place of meaning. Make it a phenomenal place.

Attributes are not limitations.

We are the transcendence of any limitation mind imposes.

Metanoia, beyond-mind, checks us out of our former accommodations and leads us to new bright places of spirit, truth, heart, and, most importantly, laughter.

I greet you there and here.

Enjoy your journey.

Enjoy your companions.

Enjoy forever being born!

A cloud hangs over the day.

When man tries to ape the divine there is much suffering.

I mourn Hiroshima's mushroom cloud. I greet the unknowing cloud of Tabor.

I prefer transformation and transfiguration to mass murder and posturing power.

– He did not know what he was saying. As he spoke, a cloud came and covered them with shadow; and when they went into the cloud the disciples were afraid.
(--from Luke 9:28-36)

Be afraid of those who want you to be afraid of others.

If you wish to avoid wandering in samsara there is not better way than to seek Buddhahood. If you want to become a Buddha, understand that Buddha is the mind. How can you search for the mind in the far distance? It is not outside the body. The physical body is a phantom, for it is subject to birth and death; the true mind is like space, for it neither ends nor changes. Therefore, it is said, "These hundred bones will crumble and return to fire and wind. But One Thing is eternally numinous and covers heaven and earth."
- Chinul (1158-1210)

When Jesus was transfigured, the story goes, and all settled back into ordinariness, they discovered they were alone.

Only alone.

Like Thomas Bolt's poem "Temporary Structure" where "a bucket slowly disintegrating in a creek where 'it is beaten back and forth.' It is the form given by thought and language to a present continually improvised... " (James Merrill, from Foreword to Thomas Bolt's Out of the Woods, c. 1989)

This is our life.

This, our poem.

Worded.

Wondering, which cloud reveals our present coming?

"...[B]ut what is all-encompassing can have no opposite." (From Introduction to A Course in Miracles)

Before the eaves, slender bamboos,
A thousand stalks of jade,
Sing when the cool
Rains fall, with a rustling sound,
Their feathery green intruding at my desk;
They know there is no
Purer hidden spot than this.
- Isho Tokugan (1360–1437)

There is no outside.

Only illusory thoughts of there being an outside.

With each other, with one another, there is no other.

We're in the same boat.

Two plus two is four.

This message is not just
For the rich and noble
The thousand flowers
And the hundred grasses
All have spring within them
Profound people in later days
Who read the sutras
Do not ask the way to the
Great road of enlightenment.
Stop! Stop!
Why do you have to wander the south?
The site of enlightenment is right
Under your feet.
- T'aego (1301-1382)

Two times two is four.

Please -- evidence and experience.

No dogma, no doctrine.

Lies last only so long then stop.

Truth extends and expands, goes on and on.

Call truth; tell truth.

Sit still; stand still.

And know.

There's a phrase in the Nicene Creed: "...one in being with the Father."

It might read: One in being-with, the Father.

A single moon
Bright and clear
In an unclouded sky;
Yet still we stumble
In the world's darkness.
- Ikkyu (1394-1481)

Maybe it's what God is -- "being-with."

When we are really with someone, it is where God is.

Tao Te Ching - Lao Tzu - chapter 67

Everyone under heaven says that my Tao is great and beyond compare.
Because it is great, it seems different.
If it were not different, it would have vanished long ago.

I have three treasures which I hold and keep.
The first is mercy; the second is economy;
The third is daring not to be ahead of others.
From mercy comes courage; from economy comes generosity;
From humility comes leadership.

Nowadays men shun mercy, but try to be brave;
They abandon economy, but try to be generous;
They do not believe in humility, but always try to be first.
This is certain death.

Mercy brings victory in battle and strength in defense.
It is the means by which heaven saves and guards.

(translation by Gia-fu Feng and Jane English)

They say Jesus said: "I am with you always, even to the end of the age" (Matthew 28:20)

Be merciful, with us!

The trail through woods on Ragged Mountain at dusk was dry and worn. I'd live in Cape Breton but for the mountains and ocean here. I'm glad Canada is neighbor.

Remember, as something "is" it is always also something "other." Being and otherness thus coexist in the continuous unfolding of becoming. Here it is extremely helpful to make note of the following passage by Derrida where he states: "You see, pure unity or pure multiplicity -- when there is only totality or unity and when there is only multiplicity or disassociation -- is a synonym of death." Here we can now also add the thinking of Jean-Luc Nancy's philosophy of "being singular plural" where once again the emphasis is on both, as compared to one or the other, in the movement of being.
(pp.15-16, The Ethics of Uncertainty, Aporetic Openings, by Michael Anker, c.2009, Atropos Press)

Dog laps water.

It is August. Nights cool.

The wisdom of the Tathagatas is just like this: it is complete in the bodies of all sentient beings. It is merely all these ordinary, foolish people who are not aware of it and do not recognize it.
- Avatamsaka sutra

We're different and we change.

You and I are not who we were yesterday.

How do we remember each other?

Just by walking around?

The grass covered path
Is secluded and still;
A closed door faces
The Chung-nan Mountains.
In the evening, the air’s chilly,
But the light rain stops;
At dawn, far off,
A few cicadas start.
Leave fall
Where no green earth remains;
A person at his ease
Wears a common white robe.
With simplicity and plainness
His original nature still,
What need to practice
Calming of the heart?
- Chia Tao (779-843)

Rowing just after sunrise, passing gathering on southeast corner of yacht club high above low tide, a wedding party occupies the edge. I watch a few moments. Offer a prayer for them. Raise oars, extend arms, dip flats, pull up, exiting between green and red channel markers through calm and smooth waters.

Then he told them a parable: ‘There was once a rich man who, having had a good harvest from his land, thought to himself, “What am I to do? I have not enough room to store my crops.” Then he said, “This is what I will do: I will pull down my barns and build bigger ones, and store all my grain and my goods in them, and I will say to my soul: My soul, you have plenty of good things laid by for many years to come; take things easy, eat, drink, have a good time.” But God said to him, “Fool! This very night the demand will be made for your soul; and this hoard of yours, whose will it be then?.” So it is when a man stores up treasure for himself in place of making himself rich in the sight of God.’
(--from Luke 12:13-21)

Seems that I remember you're not to call your brother 'Fool.' Maybe that was his name. 'Empty-headed person; bellows, bag.'

I'd like to be a fool. (Some would probably say to forget the future subjunctive, enter the present indicative.) I am a fool. (But I don't want to brag.)

Without any guile I'm saying, I feel grateful to those whose serious attitudes and life lived at the edge of death define me as an empty human being and dreamer (there are moments when I'm on their side). Fundamentally, an entire human being is simply a being in whom transcendence is abolished, from whom there's no separating anything now. An entire human being is partly a clown, partly God, partly crazy . . . and is transparence.

(p.xxix, Preface, to On Nietzsche, by Georges Bataille, c.1945, English translation by Bruce Boone 1992, Paragon House, NY)

There's nothing in me but the interstice of what is to be found in you.

For Gina Arline Berriault

In the California Gardens

evening primrose, wand flowers,

red angel trumpets and poppies

abound in an extravagance

of beauty

that leads inward

where silence itself is beauty

and in that interior altar

is the recognition

of joined minds.

A sculptor of words dwells there,

her presence is clarity,

musical and precise

with a quality of friendship

that blesses us all.

This is the privilege

of life itself

and however far we fall short

in our friendship

the lines that stretch between us

are all there is

God is what we have between

each other and is never lost

I walked up her steps,

knocked on the door

and the door would open

into her rare air

A tea table perched in space

above sailing boats,

her head tilted

or held in her hands

a salad and cheese

and the spring light of her live spirit

carried me into higher currents.

We don't know what we are

or where, or how to look upon

ourselves or the world.

But in a dark place this week,

I turned and there at eye level

was an orchid of such translucent

radiance, it's her!

I thought with a jolt of recognition

And it is.

Thats how I remember her.

(Poem by Indigo Hotchkiss, San Francisco CA --from Haight Ashbury Literary Journal, Vol 23 Number 2,

http://www.ad122112.com/HaightAshbury/poetry.html)

This is how we remember each other: remember what is between us.

"God is what we have between

each other and is never lost"

I went, after rowing, to sit with the Quakers. They are signless now. So a couple walks through their sitting at the outdoor Children's Chapel, white earphone buds in their ears, talking to each other throughout their passing, then down the stone steps past large silent bronze bell, and back to gravel driveway. The Quakers just sit there, not ruffled or shushing, gazing out at wide sunny Penobscot Bay or in to their accepting hearts, allowing each sound to come to go.

Just Walking Around

What name do I have for you?
Certainly there is not name for you
In the sense that the stars have names
That somehow fit them. Just walking around,

An object of curiosity to some,
But you are too preoccupied
By the secret smudge in the back of your soul
To say much and wander around,

Smiling to yourself and others.
It gets to be kind of lonely
But at the same time off-putting.
Counterproductive, as you realize once again

That the longest way is the most efficient way,
The one that looped among islands, and
You always seemed to be traveling in a circle.
And now that the end is near

The segments of the trip swing open like an orange.
There is light in there and mystery and food.
Come see it.
Come not for me but it.
But if I am still there, grant that we may see each other.

(From: A Wave - Poems by John Ashbery)

It is a lovely prayer -- silence. Each oar-stroke on my 2 hour journey around two bell-buoys served as prayer and patient progress. The Osprey chose not to dive at me. The seal did not try to leap into the pea-pod. I leave a nickel on #2 out beyond Curtis Island for mariners in need or for the spirits of those whose ashes travel tides in and out each dawn and dusk.

It is our life -- to journey with and through each other.

Do come. See it.

"Grant that we may," indeed, "see each other."

With calm hearts.

Walking around.

The uncertain is a landscape we gaze into trying to identify what we are seeing.

We are that landscape.

It is what we are.

Seeing.

The self-nature of suchness gives rise to thoughts. But even though the six sense-faculties see, hear, sense, and know, it is not tainted by the myriad images. The true nature is constantly free and self-reliant.
- Platform Sutra

No need to identify.

Rather, simply see.

In that immediate and intimate act.

You come to be.

Free.

Watching Jeremy Rifkin's talk based on his book The Empathic Civilization: The Race to Global Consciousness in a World in Crisis.

Brilliant!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-7BjeHepbA

We've really got to talk.

In the dark wind gusts pushed bow of peapod from its track. It was a good row demanding strong concentration. Alone and attentive with every stroke.

The kindness of a mariner who motored to 30 yards of my rounding the currents and waves buffered by swirling blow -- when he saw I was just fine, he circled away.

Attention is never alone.

Aristotle said that in order for people to become virtuous, we need role models—others who have developed their capacities for courage, self-control, wisdom, and justice. We may emphasize different sets of virtues or ideas about what makes a proper role model, but Buddhism also asserts that, as we are all connected and interdependent, none of us can do it all on our own.

Acknowledging this dependency is the first step of real emotional work within relationships. Our ambivalence about our own needs and dependency gets stirred up in all kinds of relationships. We cannot escape our feelings and needs and desires if we are going to be in relationships with others. To be in relationships is to feel our vulnerability in relation to other people who are unpredictable, and in circumstances that are intrinsically uncontrollable and unreliable.

-Barry Magid, No Gain (Tricycle, Summer 2008)

We're not thinking yet.

We are frozen in thoughts and concepts.

But we're not thinking yet.

It is a call, thinking is.

And we are being called.

Rowing to Curtis Island tonight swells squeeze through passageway between island and mainland. Centerboard down, incoming tide and northwest wind make tricky currents in lowering dark. Balmy at 9PM sidling western channel.

The Mind is neither large nor small; it is located neither within nor without. It should not be thought about by the mind nor be discussed by the mouth. Ordinarily, it is said that we use the Mind to transmit the Mind, or that we use the Mind to seal the Mind. Actually, however, in transmitting the Mind, there is really no Mind to receive or obtain; and in sealing the Mind, there is really no Mind to seal. If this is the case, then does the Mind exist or does it not exist? Actually, it cannot be said with certainty that the Mind either exists or does not exist, for it is Absolute Reality. This is expressed in the Ch'an Sect by the maxim: "If you open your mouth, you are wrong. If you give rise to a single thought, you are in error." So, if you can quiet your thinking totally, all that remains is voidness and stillness.
(-- from, The Dharma of Mind Transmission, Zen Teachings of Huang-po)

What can be outside something without an outside? What can be inside something with no inside?

You cannot escape yourself because there's no place to go. No need to be yourself because the self is an illusion.

Might as well buy that small house in Aspy Bay and begin it while being done with it. Five bedrooms. There could be guests. And long walks on a long beach.

the finger
by Charles Bukowski

the drivers of automobiles
have very little recourse or
originality.
when upset with
another
driver
they often give him the
FINGER.

I have seen two adult
men
florid of face
driving along
giving each other the
FINGER.

well, we all know what
this means, it's no
secret.

still, this gesture is
so overused it has
lost most of its
impact.

some of the men who give
the FINGER are captains of
industry, city councilmen,
insurance adjusters,
accountants and/or the just plain
unemployed.
no matter.
it is their favorite
response.

people will never admit
that they drive
badly.

the FINGER is their
reply.

I see grown men
FINGERING each other
throughout the day.

it gives me pause.
when I consider
the state of our cities,
the state of our states,
the state of our country,
I begin to
understand.

the FINGER is a mind-
set.
we are the FINGERERS.
we give it
to each other.
we give it coming and
going.
we don't know how
else to respond.

what a hell of a way
to not
live.

(Poem, "The Finger" by Charles Bukowski, from Bone Palace Ballet. © Black Sparrow Press, 2002.)

It's hard to imagine a sillier way to live than blowing each other up and shooting bullets into one another.

Soon, some say, we'll stop.

Maybe after we spend the additional recently allocated 59 billion dollars on our warring Afghanistan we'll drop a dime on stupidity and turn it in.

Stupidity is tired and wants and deserves to be taken off the streets.

To be replaced by something -- something more kindly.

Maybe there's a chance of becoming human -- for a change.

Are there words?

It is possible the world is more dangerous than we think.

What really matters is to be aware, not wary.

Live well, die well, but don't fret.

"If you walk, just walk. If you sit, just sit. But whatever you do, don't wobble." (-- Master Ummon)

War seems too matter-of-fact. Let's see -- shop for peanut butter, write letter of thanks for gift, change air filter, and...go to war.

Unmoving, it presents itself in a thousand shapes.
And when it moves, it doesn't reveal itself in anything.
What is the essence of this nothingness?
Chrysanthemums luxuriously blooming after frost.
- Taego Bowoo (1301-1382)

Cicadas! A few days early, but their chant begins.

There are 5589 US casualties as of 25July2010 in Iraq and Afghanistan. Sorrow for their deaths.

And sorrow for all who have died in these countries in the wars, terrorism, and other related causes.

There are no words.

None.

After Sunday Evening Practice we take Gerard home and go down to peapod. It is large moon one day short of full. We row out and around Curtis Island in the dark silvery wake of moonlight. Green blinking lighthouse, we pray for Connie, chant Nunc Dimittis, and pull hard against northwest wind back into harbor.

Silvery moon hangs high in the sky.
I ride a tiny boat in the vast and misty sea.
Moon and sea forgotten;
I forget that I have forgotten.
And before the window
I sit quietly in meditation until midnight.

- Jakushitsu (1290–1368)

I think during 12 hours on the road today that the traditional repartee still makes sense: The Lord be with you! And with each breath you take.

Be.

With you.

In each breath.

The City, Berobed in Blue
by Eleanor Lerman

What do you think has come over me?
I did not feel like this yesterday
but today, all I find myself thinking is,
This could be my last apartment,
my last lover; this could be the last dog
I ever own—as if I were going to die
at any moment. Which of course
is possible (myocardial infarction,
genetic defect, lighting bolt)

The anxiety may pass, but not
the age. Yikes, every moment says
And then, Look out!

Well, what can be done but put
a good face on it? A big one,
round as a moon and glittering
to the last. Or maybe slide into
an om state, where nothing is
something and everything is
more or less of something else

Better yet, maybe it's time to think
about the city, berobed in blue,
which now appears to me in memory
as a good place for a young girl,
who only I can recognize

See how lightly she steps off into
another, and then another morning
And as if she has never done it before,
begins to breathe
(Poem, "The City, Berobed in Blue" by Eleanor Lerman, from The Sensual World Re-emerges. © Sarabande Books, 2010.)

To be in communion is best.

With one another.

Tonight, full moon.

Wholeness is with us in each breath we are given!

Sunday.

At the hermitage we find that to oppose is to draw a tight box around what you oppose -- with you on the inside. Better to invite what you are uncertain of into an open questioning circle -- which is loose, laissez-faire, and liberating. That the circle is perimeter-less and permeable makes the questioning circle-back upon itself while spiraling toward unreachable and ungraspable extension of itself. In other words (my mother's favorite phrase) there's no end to it and no one knows how, where, or when it began or even whether there was a beginning.

This is God's name and face -- unpronounceable and diffusely unrecognizable. It is silly to even try to employ metaphors and words about this inquiry. Silly and foolish.

Still, being a fool becomes me as I become some other being.

Among the many realizations to which I awakened was this: "You don't have to go to church to know God." For reasons too obvious to mention, this isn't the kind of message the church, or any religion, wants spread around. But it's true nonetheless. There is no religion, not even the Christian religion, holding the title deed to God. God's grace is not limited to a select few. The moment any religion believes it is, you can be sure that religion knows nothing of God.

If there is anything Jesus, and the Buddha, made abundantly clear it is that the wind blows where it will. You can hear it, see its effects, and feel its power, but you can never contain it. In other words, the moment I stopped trying to find God, God found me. I love the way Deepak Chopra once framed it: "God is not difficult to find; God is impossible to ignore."

Even the title to this article, "Finding God After Religion," seems to imply that there's something you must "do" to know God. But the real truth is this: there is nothing you need to do to know God. You know God already. The mistake that virtually all religions make, including Christianity, is to confuse beliefs for faith and, as a consequence, condition people to think that there are things that they must do, duties that they must perform, etc., for God to be pleased and her presence to be known.

Finding God after religion? Remember the following: In Eastern thought, there's something called "the law of least effort," or "do less and accomplish more." If you will give up the "doing" and, instead, just enjoy "being," I think you'll make a great discovery. The psalmist said, "Be still and know ... " In my own experience, I have found that when I'm present (and that's my spiritual practice), I'm immediately in Presence, the real and sacred sanctuary of God.

What more would you want? What more would religion ever give you?

(from, Finding God After Leaving Religion, by Steve McSwain, author of, 'The Enoch Factor: The Sacred Art of Knowing God', Posted: July 24, 2010 11:23 AM,
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/steve-mcswain/finding-god-after-leaving_b_651148.html)

Saskia and I chant Lauds in chapel/zendo. Dog stays on porch. Cat surveys any movement from loft.

We like the words from Ephesians:

19 Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and aliens, but fellow citizens with God's people and members of God's household, 20 built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone. 21 In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. 22 And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit.
(Ephesians 2:19-22, New International Version)

"Being built together to become."

To be, come to be with.

Be-come.

This is my church, my religion, and my spirituality.

Chipmunk scampers over lichened rocks. Phoebe alight then depart felled tree limb. Dean brings David Bodanis book on E=MC2 and Roger Collins' Keepers of the Keys of Heaven, A History of the Papacy to where I sit on this porch.

Cheryl also visits with Cynthea Bourgeault's The Wisdom Jesus: Transforming Heart and Mind--A New Perspective on Christ and His Message -- which we will read from and converse about the next several Tuesdays at Pilot to Practice.

We are here to converse with Being Itself Becoming Itself.

There are no priests or preachers, no imams or rabbis, zen masters or chief executive officers, no tenured chairs or gurus of any stripe.

Only each of us.

Come round. Look around. Circle yourself. Encircle everything.

With loving attention

Go on.

To be with.

Mitzein.

Philosophy conference in Camden today. Sat in left rear near kitchen door behind by one row the standing Dutch man up from Friendship Road.

The second presenter was a philosopher named Michael Anker from the College of New Rochelle in NY. He said, "As something is coming to be it is already becoming something other."

From his website:

FRIDAY, MARCH 27, 2009
opening of world as world - thinking difference
Within Any Possible Universe, No Intellect Can Ever Know It All: Scientific American

Part 1: first thoughts/questions in relation to article above.

As Jean-Luc Nancy continuously emphasizes throughout his philosophy: "there is no outside the world". The world or universe as such has only itself, in the sense that it always already exceeds totalizations by being totalization par excellence. Herein lies an interesting dilemma or problem. How can the world/universe always exceed totalization by never being understood or totally grasped from the outside (always understood from within and thus uncertain as the article above notes), and at the same time be a type of totalization in and of itself by being an all encompassing one-all? It's interesting to see how quickly these thoughts lead us to the age old philosophical question discussed from Parmenides to Heraclitus, and onward to such thinkers as Leibniz and Spinoza. This question of course is the relation of the One to the Many. How can the universe or world be "One" by having no outside, and yet contain within it a multiplicity of difference recognized as "Many"? In other words, if the universe is all encompassing, how can difference as such within the world truly exist? Or, if difference as such does exist within the world, how can it be circumscribed by the notion of One-All? Again, if each and every singularity as difference in the world exists with each and every other singularity in the world, does this inter-connectivity of "being-with" in the world (with no outside of world) not lead us toward a rethinking of difference itself? In short, what is difference in relation to a universe or world which is an all encompassing entity?

Note: These preliminary thoughts have led me toward a thinking on Alain Badiou's philosophy in relation to set-theory, multiplicity, the "count-as-one", and the matheme as ontology. It seems Badiou also tries to navigate through the terrain of the "one and the many".

POSTED BY MICHAELANKER AT 2:06 PM http://michaelanker.blogspot.com/search?updated-max=2009-11-15T18%3A21%3A00-05%3A00&max-results=7

From the Snow bowl you can hear sounds of Hope Jazz Festival drift through drizzle to hermitage.

I'm glad there are men and women thinking -- we are called toward thinking. I'm equally glad there is a love of jazz, an acceptance of rain, and the never-ending insistence by white Border Collie to pick up and toss tennis ball across kitchen where the Coon Cat steps up to his feeding platform under the kitchen table

Perhaps the World Ends Here
by Joy Harjo

The world begins at a kitchen table. No matter what,
we must eat to live.
The gifts of earth are brought and prepared, set on the
table so it has been since creation, and it will go on.
We chase chickens or dogs away from it. Babies teethe
at the corners. They scrape their knees under it.
It is here that children are given instructions on what
it means to be human. We make men at it,
we make women.
At this table we gossip, recall enemies and the ghosts
of lovers.
Our dreams drink coffee with us as they put their arms
around our children. They laugh with us at our poor
falling-down selves and as we put ourselves back
together once again at the table.
This table has been a house in the rain, an umbrella
in the sun.
Wars have begun and ended at this table. It is a place
to hide in the shadow of terror. A place to celebrate
the terrible victory.
We have given birth on this table, and have prepared
our parents for burial here.
At this table we sing with joy, with sorrow.
We pray of suffering and remorse.
We give thanks.
Perhaps the world will end at the kitchen table,
while we are laughing and crying,
eating of the last sweet bite.
(Poem, "Perhaps the World Ends Here" by Joy Harjo, from Reinventing the Enemy's Language. © W.W. Norton and Co., 1998)

I'd rather be in my kitchen than at a philosophy conference or jazz festival.

It's a hermit's preference.

Happy to know.

Others are there.

En route elsewhere.

Somethings should remain hidden.


The way Christ is hidden.

Everywhere we look.

Perhaps "Here."

Or,"Now."

"No w here."

"With-us."

If you chose a name, any name, for God -- which would you choose to use in constant prayer speaking the name until there was no other name and every other word along with the one you chose had no meaning whatsoever but the permeating sense that it is of God that every word resonates intention, feeling and resolve; therein, the emergence and emanation of your word, your God, your self?
Tonight mine was: Here, we are.

Or: Here, I am.

About which and wherein which all proceed in the name of the Lord.

Is that how you felt, Mary of Magdala?

Is this how we pray?

Everything within the name?

Which, of course, becomes unpronounceable.

Becoming no-name.

Would you choose again?

Non ubi, nunc heri, cum nobis.

There is no choice for me...

Let it be:

No-where now-here with-us!

"Selah" in the Hebrew Psalms shows up and probably indicates a musical interlude.

Selah (Hebrew: סֶלָה‎, also transliterated as selāh) is a word used frequently in the Hebrew Bible, often in the Psalms, and is a difficult concept to translate. (It should not be confused with the Hebrew word sela‘ (Hebrew: סֶלַע‎) which means "rock.") It is probably either a liturgico-musical mark or an instruction on the reading of the text, something like "stop and listen". "Let those with eyes see and with ears hear" is most concise.[citation needed] "Selah" can also be used to indicate that there is to be a musical interlude at that point in the Psalm. [1]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selah#cite_note-0

Interlude. To play between.

Perhaps we are that interlude, here to play between the cycles of nature that introduce, eradicate, and reconvene.

Psalm 24 (New International Version)

Psalm 24

[Of David. A psalm.]

1 The earth is the LORD's, and everything in it,
the world, and all who live in it;
2 for he founded it upon the seas
and established it upon the waters.

3 Who may ascend the hill of the LORD ?
Who may stand in his holy place?

4 He who has clean hands and a pure heart,
who does not lift up his soul to an idol
or swear by what is false. [a]

5 He will receive blessing from the LORD
and vindication from God his Savior.

6 Such is the generation of those who seek him,
who seek your face, O God of Jacob. [b]
Selah

7 Lift up your heads, O you gates;
be lifted up, you ancient doors,
that the King of glory may come in.

8 Who is this King of glory?
The LORD strong and mighty,
the LORD mighty in battle.

9 Lift up your heads, O you gates;
lift them up, you ancient doors,
that the King of glory may come in.

10 Who is he, this King of glory?
The LORD Almighty—
he is the King of glory.
Selah

Play, play, wherever you may be; dance, dance, whatever you may see.

Waterworld
A review of The Flooded Earth:
Our Future in a World Without Ice Caps

review by James N. Gardner

IS ANTHROPOGENIC GLOBAL WARMING the cataclysmic threat that Al Gore and the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change proclaim it to be? Or do powerful natural forces like variable solar output, plate tectonics, and volcanic activity dwarf the climate impact of human-generated greenhouse gases?

That is the deep question that lurks beneath the surface of a fascinating new book — The Flooded Earth: Our Future in a World Without Ice Caps — by University of Washington scientist Peter D. Ward. Ward, co-author of the highly acclaimed Rare Earth: Why Complex Life Is Uncommon in the Universe, is at his best when he provides snapshots of the climate extremes our planet has experienced over the billions of years of its existence. Here is his description of ancient episodes of global warming that make the dire warnings of current climate prognosticators seem almost benign:

Long before humans were even a gleam in nature’s eye, the convergence of geological forces repeatedly caused the planet to heat up. Such events, however rare, hugely altered life and its evolution. The warming had resulted from enormous volumes of carbon dioxide that emanated from the flood basalts, creating atmospheric greenhouse conditions that quickly heated the planet to a point that the poles were nearly as warm as the equator, leading the normal winds and ocean currents to diminish and in some cases totally stop. A stilled ocean, eventually even on its surface regions, loses oxygen. The apparent result was a series of nasty events, such as oceanwide “dead zones” … where conditions of eutrophication — where a body of water first warms and then loses its oxygen as its enclosed life dies and then rots — have eliminated all the life-giving oxygen in the water.

If nature is capable of this level of environmental catastrophe on its own, just how much can we feeble humans really influence the future evolution of the vast, complex global climate system? The optimistic answer, favored by Ward, is that humankind is now firmly in the driver’s seat of climate change:

As I give talks around the country about a newly discovered phenomenon of the deep past greenhouse extinctions, people always ask about the relevance of these studies to the present and near future. That question is simple to answer, at least for me: what happened in the past can and will happen again if we continue to heat the planet at present rates.

Ward’s implication is that if we humans will only cease our global warming malefactions, the violent climatic oscillations he so colorfully documents — oscillations that predate by millions of years humanity’s evolutionary emergence on the savannahs of Africa — will be brought under tolerable control.

The pessimist would argue that the mountain of geological evidence assembled and expertly presented by Ward points to precisely the opposite conclusion — that what happened in the past can and will happen again regardless of what human beings do.

What seems incontrovertible from Ward’s compelling narrative is that, irrespective of the precise causal interplay of human-induced and natural factors, the Earth’s deep history offers ample evidence that the atmospheric conditions on this planet are likely to continue to fluctuate dramatically, with potentially dire consequences for the biosphere. From the mysterious Permian extinction 250 million years ago, in which 96% of all marine species went extinct, to the Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction event 65 million years which killed off the dinosaurs, the story of our planet’s long environmental history is a tale of repeated episodes of dramatic change that have threatened the very survival of complex life.

In the face of this overwhelming evidentiary record, only a cock-eyed optimist would contend that what is past is not prologue.

(--from Skeptic, Promoting Science and Critical Thinking, http://www.skeptic.com/eskeptic/10-07-21/#feature)

If we are 'of the earth' which is 'of the Lord' we are as we are of a piece. Nothing happens to us, rather, everything happens as us.

Q: By what expedient means can we turn our minds around instantly to realize our inherent essence?

A: It is just your own mind; what further expedient means would you apply? If you apply expedient means to go on to seek intellectual understanding, this is like wanting to see your own eyes because you think you have no eyes if you cannot see them.

Since they are your own eyes, how can you see them? As long as you have not lost them, that is called seeing eyes. If you have no more desire to see, does that mean you imagine you are not seeing?

So it is also with one's own open awareness. Since it is one's own mind, how can one yet seek to see it? If you just seek understanding, then you do not understand it. Just know that which does not understand; this is seeing essence.

- Master Chinul (1158-1210) DailyZen

Our inherent essence.

Our own eyes.

One's own open awareness.

Whatever is taking place is just this: this is seeing essence.

Play well.

Selah

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!