I heard what might have been the pickup truck go by the hermitage last night around 10:30pm.

Later, I heard the emergency vehicle climb the long hill. The long hill, the curve at Pearse's farm, the gully, the curving turn passing Seacoast Road.

The three young people, ages 21, 17, and 14, one male, two female, were dead at the scene after the truck, in mist and fog, slid on its side into a tree.

This morning cars and trucks in ordinary transport ascend and descend Barnestown Road. It is still wet and misting, grey and desolate in the dropped-color stillness along the mountain sluice of Bald and Ragged.

A deeper, more sober transport took place last night. There is a pall drenching the wide circumference of this sorrow.

For these three, for families and friends, for all of us attending this place, we mourn and pray safe passage!

Act surprised at what is taking place.

"Act the way you'd like to be and soon you'll be the way you act."
-- Leonard Cohen

I am surprised.

(And nothing is

Ever

The same

Again.)

Just by listening with your eyes
you can fold back on yourself and
merge into that primal stream of awareness
like a river is swallowed by the
immensity of the ocean.
Only then will you know
the point to live from.
- Ji Aoi Isshi

Stream, not scream.

Asking: What's the point?

Responding: What is...is the point.

The times I feel pointless are the times I am going nowhere.

In a Susan Stamberg interview with Dick Cavett on NPR this morning, a segment from his talk show in 1973 conversation with Marlon Brando:

"We couldn't survive a second if we weren't able to act," Brando said. "Acting is a survival mechanism. It's a social unguent and it's a lubricant. We act to save our lives, actually, every day. People lie constantly every day by not saying something that they think, or [by] saying something that they didn't think."

"That's not acting," Cavett countered.

"That is acting," Brando insisted.

Does act itself, with nothing else, invite yielding?

A merging way emerging way!

It's just the way I feel.

Three quotes by Ludwig Wittgenstein -- (listed on Wikipedia). One by Muso -- (from DailyZen).

What cannot be imagined cannot even be talked about.
(-- Ludwig Wittgenstein, Journal entry (12 October 1916), p. 84e)

Then:

Many times the mountains
have turned from green to yellow.
So much for the capricious earth!
Dust in your eyes,
the triple world is narrow.
Nothing on your mind,
your chair is wide enough.
- Muso (1275 – 1351)

And:

My aim is: to teach you to pass from a piece of disguised nonsense to something that is patent nonsense.
(§ 464, Philosophical Investigations, 1953)

Finally:

"Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen."
Translated: Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent. (7)
Also: About what one can not speak, one must remain silent. (7)
--Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1922)

Exactly!

Note: There will be no Sunday Evening Practice tonight.

See you next time.

The world is wounded and weary. Spent shells of ordinariness and ordinance litter the ground. Bandage packaging is strewn along the edge of our attention. We look askance at anyone walking near us.

Aid. Help. Beginning. Now. Ever shall be.
Amen.

Loaves and Fishes

This is not
the age of information.

This is not
the age of information.

Forget the news,
and the radio,
and the blurred screen.

This is the time
of loaves
and fishes.

People are hungry
and one good word is bread
for a thousand.

-- David Whyte
from The House of Belonging
©1996 Many Rivers Press

I cannot unmake war on Iraq. I cannot unmake war on Afghanistan. I cannot stop the charge to war forming against Iran.

I cannot elect kind, compassionate, effective, and just leaders by myself. I cannot stop men fondling and raping children, women, or other men. I cannot make the world a harmonious place while so many of us are dwelling within ourselves falsely.

But here is what I can do. I can enter the silence of attentive presence and dwell there quietly. I can heat water for someone's tea. I can brew coffee. I can speak when spoke to with simplicity, kindness, and respect.

I can walk up to bodhichitta and declare my interest.

Etymologically, the word [bodhichitta] is a combination of the Sanskrit words bodhi and citta. Bodhi means "awakening" or "enlightenment". Citta is derived from the Sanskrit root cit, and denotes "that which is conscious" – mind or consciousness. Bodhicitta may be translated as "awakening mind" or "mind of enlightenment". (--Wikipedia)

I can sit in quiet readiness to enter one place possible to find sanity in the world.

Forgiveness is an essential ingredient of bodhichitta practice. It allows us to let go of the past and make a fresh start. Forgiveness cannot be forced. When we are brave enough to open our hearts to ourselves, however, forgiveness will emerge.

There is a simple practice we can do to cultivate forgiveness. First we acknowledge what we feel - shame, revenge, embarrassment, remorse. Then we forgive ourselves for being human. Then, in the spirit of not wallowing in the pain, we let go and make a fresh start. We don't have to carry the burden with us anymore.

We can acknowledge, forgive, and start anew. If we practice this way, little by little we'll learn to abide with the feeling of regret for having hurt ourselves and others. We will also learn self-forgiveness. Eventually, at our own speed, we'll even find our capacity to forgive those who have done us harm.

We will discover forgiveness as a natural expression of the open heart, and expression of our basic goodness. This potential is inherent in every moment. Each moment is an opportunity to make a fresh start.

(--from, Comfortable with Uncertainty: 108 Teachings on Cultivating Fearlessness and Compassion (Shambhala Library) by Pema Chodron)

This morning there's a north wind.

I'll take my oars from barn, tie them to roof rack, drive to head of harbor, descend ramp, untie peapod, and row to and around Curtis Island, wave to empty space on small porch where recently deceased lighthouse keeper sat and waved each morning his last season of looking out over Penobscot Bay, and I will contemplate the sounds, smells, and swells of the fragile place of passage I am/we are.

The world is not the problem.

The world is that through which we make our way home without ever leaving it.

Listening always for and with one good word resounding in and through everything this Sunday morning.

Not so much to hear it, but to be it soundlessly in what is being done.

It very well might be the best.

Spring has its hundred flowers,
Autumn has its many moons.
Summer has cool winds,
Winter its snow.
If useless thoughts do not
Cloud your mind,
Each day is the best of your life.
- Wu-Men-Hui-Kai (1183–1260)

And tonight there's an extra hour to be the best in a new moon filled with emptiness.

My best feels a little desolate in new darkness.

Tumbling down the mountain.

The sounds of streams
Are Buddha's speech.
The colored mountains
Are Buddha's pure body.
Night brings eighty-four thousand
Poems of Buddha.
Listen, and someday you may awaken.
- Su Shih (1031-1101)

Connections without contrivance or controversy.

We dedicate the space newly constructed last year in honor of Raimon Panikkar. It is now to be known as:

THE RAIMON PANIKKAR CONVERSATION KITCHEN.

We like him. He died in August of this year. He has inspired us for a while now.

And while now, we want his inclusive, expansive way of seeing and saying things to continue to inspire the conversations taking place around the firebox.

“...[T]he indivisible reality of love is the only True Self.”
(--Cynthia Bourgeault in The Wisdom Jesus, p.32)

And Panikkar:

God is always God for the world, and if the conception of the world has changed so radically in our times, there is little wonder that the notion of God is undergoing a corresponding change.
(-in Christophany, the Fullness of Man.)

Nishitani called it circumincessional interpenetration.

A profound and corresponding change.

Nobody saw it coming.
It came.
Yesterday's elections.
Can you see where it is going?

All Souls.

They must know, by now, what Raimon Panikkar's thinking is revealing.

What for long has driven and unified Panikkar's thinking has been his cosmotheandric vision of reality, what he calls the "trinity" of cosmic matter, human consciousness, and divine presence in co-constitutive relationality. These three basic and irreducible dimensions of reality interpenetrate one another and only exist in relation to one another:

There is a kind of perichoresis, "dwelling within one another," of these three dimensions of Reality: the Divine, the Human, and the Cosmic. 3

And then again:

There is no matter without spirit and no spirit without matter, no World without Man, no God without the universe, etc. God, Man, and World are three artificial substantivized forms of the three primordial adjectives which describe Reality. 4

(from Foreword, written by Joseph Prabhu, to Raimon Panikkar's The Rhythm of Being: The Gifford Lectures, p.xvii.

Footnotes:

3. Panikkar, "The Myth of Pluralism: The Tower of Babel - A meditation on Non-Violence," Cross Currents 29, no.2 {1979}: 214-16.)

4. Panikkar, "Philosophy as Lifestyle," in Philosophers on Their Own Work {Berne: Peter Lang, 1978}, 206.)

Wonderfully worded!

As is each soul.

Nov.2nd is election day. It is All Soul's Day. We might consider electing dead souls.

Some might call that business and money as usual.

May the politicians and the faithful departed rest in peace!

To be faithful you must have attended your life on earth.

My mind is inclined to quiet;
Outside of things,
I lodge in the brush.
The sense of the mountains is best
When you reach their depths;
The source of the valley stream, distant,
Is naturally purified.
For the rest of my life,
All that's missing is death;
All thoughts and worries
Are settled already.
Recluses should leave no tracks;
People stop asking their names.
- Wen-siang (1210-1280)

Ama nesciri -- love, to be, unknown.

And unknowing.

Go ahead. Vote.

Count.

Saints preserve us!

That's not a petition. It is a declarative. Saints declare true relationality, preserving 'us.'

Mountain of Samadhi

This mountain has neither
ugly rocks nor clumsy trees.
It raises itself ten thousand feet
towards the cold heaven.
Even a stray cloud does not
cling around the mountain.
Only the moon showers its
pale light abundantly over the summit.
- Jakushitsu (1290-1368)

Be patient. It's only your mind that wishes you not to be your true self. That will change.

Calling the saints to mind inspires, or rather arouses in us, above all else, a longing to enjoy their company, so desirable in itself. We long to share in the citizenship of heaven, to dwell with the spirits of the blessed, to join the assembly of patriarchs, the ranks of the prophets, the council of apostles, the great host of martyrs, the noble company of confessors and the choir of virgins. In short, we long to be united in happiness with all the saints. But our dispositions change. The Church of all the first followers of Christ awaits us, but we do nothing about it. The saints want us to be with them, and we are indifferent. The souls of the just await us, and we ignore them.
Come, brothers, let us at length spur ourselves on. We must rise again with Christ, we must seek the world which is above and set our mind on the things of heaven. Let us long for those who are longing for us, hasten to those who are waiting for us, and ask those who look for our coming to intercede for us. We should not only want to be with the saints, we should also hope to possess their happiness. While we desire to be in their company, we must also earnestly seek to share in their glory. Do not imagine that there is anything harmful in such an ambition as this; there is no danger in setting our hearts on such glory.
( from A sermon by Saint Bernard, abbot. Let us make haste to our brethren who are awaiting us; Office of Readings, All Saints Day)

I opt for clear sight.

Leave the reunion to those who want such reunions.

I'll take the empty room when all have moved on.

This thinnest night of the year.

Bon voyage!

Sometimes just to sit, to sit and then to pray the Liturgy of the Hours, Lectio-style, is wonderfully sufficient.

We did that this morning.

Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good,
for his love is for ever.
Give thanks to the God of gods,
for his love is for ever.
Give thanks to the Lord of lords,
for his love is for ever.
He alone works wonders,
for his love is for ever.
In his wisdom he made the heavens,
for his love is for ever.
He set the Earth upon the waters,
for his love is for ever.
He created the great lights,
for his love is for ever.
The sun, to rule over the day,
for his love is for ever.
The moon and stars, to rule over the night,
for his love is for ever.

(--Psalm 135)

It's all about fact and gratefulness.

St Catherine of Siena's Dialogue on Divine Providence

How good and how delightful is your spirit, Lord, in all men!

The eternal Father, indescribably kind and tender, turned his eye to this soul and spoke to her thus:

‘O dearest daughter, I have determined to show my mercy and loving kindness to the world, and I choose to provide for mankind all that is good. But man, ignorant, turns into a death-giving thing what I gave in order to give him life. Not only ignorant, but cruel: cruel to himself. But still I go on providing. For this reason I want you to know: whatever I give to man, I do it out of my great providence.

‘So it was that when, by my providence, I created man, I looked into myself and fell in love with the beauty of the creature I had made – for it had pleased me, in my providence, to create man in my own image and likeness.

‘Moreover, I gave man memory, to be able to remember the good things I had done for him and to be able to share in my own power, the power of the eternal Father.

‘Moreover, I gave man intellect, so that, seeing the wisdom of my Son, he could recognise and understand my own will; for I am the giver of all graces and I give them with a burning fatherly love.

‘Moreover, I gave man the desire to love, sharing in the tenderness of the Holy Spirit, so that he might love the things that his intellect had understood and seen.

‘But my kind providence did all this solely that man might be able to understand me and enjoy me, rejoicing in my vision for all eternity. And as I have told you elsewhere, the disobedience of your first parent Adam closed heaven to you – and from that disobedience came all evil through the whole world.

‘To relieve man of the death that his own disobedience had brought, I tenderly and providently gave you my only-begotten Son to heal you and bring satisfaction for your needs. I gave him the task of being supremely obedient, to free the human race of the poison that your first parent’s disobedience had spread throughout the world. Falling in love, as it were, with his task, and truly obedient, he hurried to a shameful death on the most holy Cross. By his most holy death he gave you life: not human life this time, but with the strength of his divinity.’

(--from Office of Readings, Saturday, http://www.universalis.com/-)400/readings.htm)

It's all about fact and gratefulness, wisdom and compassion.

Remind me when I forget.

Because I will forget.

I count on you.

The text of Lesson 301 in ACIM began: "Father, unless I judge I cannot weep."

You judge, you weep.

But how does such a finite being attain knowledge, reason, truth?-Heidegger formulates the probIem of truth and says there cannot be any truths in themselves, or eternal truths, but truths are always relative to Dasein.
(--from Discussion Between Ernst Cassirer and Martin Heidegger, trans by Francis Slade, in The Existential Tradition, 1971)

If everything is in relationality, you do not exist but in relation to.

And what of the alone?

The alone does not exist.

It is that from which existence emerges and to which existence returns.

No judging.

Just unaffected joy!

Writers write.

"Nulla dies sine linea" -- In English: No day without a line.

The saying is very famous in Latin, and is attested in medieval sources. The closest thing to a classical Latin source is this passage in Pliny: Apelli fuit alioqui perpetua consuetudo numquam tam occupatum diem agendi, ut non lineam ducendo exerceret artem, quod ab eo in proverbium venit "Apelles had in fact a regular custom that he never passed a day, no matter how busy, without practicing his art by drawing something (lineam ducendo), which has thus become a proverb." Apelles was a famous Greek painter in the fourth century B.C.E.; you can read more about him here at wikipedia.

The proverb is attested in the Greek collection by Arsenius, which is the version given by Erasmus in his Adages: Nullam hodie lineam duxi, "I have not drawn a line today." This is a rather negative version of the same idea; you should draw (or write) something everyday, and a day that passes without such an occasion is a lost day.

It's unfortunate that Erasmus chose to cite this Greek version of the saying, in such a negative form, when he might have cited the more positive exhortation, nulla dies sine linea. This version of the saying shows up in the Adagia compiled by Polydorus Vergilius, a contemporary of Erasmus. You can find an online edition of Polydorus's Adagia at the Herzog August Bibliothek, as well as a list of the proverb headings, listed alphabetically.

Finally, here is a medieval variant in metrical form: nulla dies abeat, qua linea ducta supersit / nec decet ignavum praeteriisse diem, "Let no day go by without a drawn line to show for it; it is not right for a day to pass by in sloth" (Walther 18894).
(--from Latin Via Proverbs, blog by Laura Gibbs, http://audiolatinproverbs.blogspot.com/2007/12/nulla-dies-sine-linea.html

Sketchers sketch.

Contemplatives look into word and images for what is expressed.

I was wondering what I should feel about having no self. It's confusing.

But then, who's there to be confused?

The Way Things Really Are

One of the main pursuits of Buddhism is to bridge the gap between the way things appear and the way things are. That approach does not come just from a curiosity to investigate phenomena. It arises from the understanding that an incorrect perception of reality inevitably leads to suffering. Grasping to solid reality and to the notion of an independent self in particular engenders a host of afflictive mental states and afflictive emotions that are the primary cause of mind-made sufferings.

(- Matthieu Ricard, in "Why Meditate?)

It's ok.

Doubt is ok.

Even when attached to nobody there.

Like drizzle -- everywhere only water.

"Living is dying," is what Krishnamurti says in a talk. (Talk 2: Part 7 (1st January 1986, Madras India,)

"Love and death go together. Because death says 'Be free, non-attached;' there's nothing you can carry with you. Love says, love says...there is no word for it. Love can exist only when there is freedom. The feeling, the enormous strength, the vitality, the energy of complete freedom." http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FxWoIn8bCpc&feature=related

The quiet of the morning!

Rain through the night leaves everything dark and damp.

If you want to be free,
Get to know your real self.
It has no form, no appearance,
No root, no basis, no abode,
But is lively and buoyant.
It responds with versatile facility,
But its function cannot be located.
Therefore when you look for it,
You become further from it;
When you seek it
You turn away from it all the more.
- Linji (d. 867) {DailyZen.org}

Do we fail to love because we fail to die while we are alive? We prefer to see death as an enemy against which (against whom?) we fortify ourselves until such time death comes and forces us into itself against (seemingly) our will.

We continue to learn to see. (To see is to learn; to learn is to see.)

Soon, one day, our seeing and learning will be whole.

Whole-sight bewith you! With every breath within, through, without, you!

The word 'bewith' remains for me a speaking of the reality once called 'God.' The word 'God' was and is a good word. As is 'bewith'.

Old Men
by Ken Hada

I make it a point now
to wave to old men I pass
old men standing in shade
of a yard, maybe
a daughter's place
where now he's just a tenant
trying to understand role reversal.

I raise my forefinger
As I steer country roads or pass
Through tired neighborhoods.
Most return a wave or nod Howdy.
Driving gives you some perspective,
shows you how you might end up.

We allow something
now, especially those of us sitting
on porch swings, those
who never got around to going
somewhere, those
who still feel like something
somehow is missing.

("Old Men" by Ken Hada from Spare Parts. © Mongrel Empire Press, 2010, The Writer's Almanac)

Any variation of the words 'being' and 'with' combined with no separation is a new sounding of God.

It sounds over-reaching to say: 'You can be God'.

But to say: 'You can bewith each and every one,' has a more approachable sound to it.

So I say to you: You arewith me. May I bewith you!

In this manner we recommend one-another to the way of being that is companionable, communing, contemplative, conversational, corresponding, and compatible.

Here is where this commensurability, measurable by the same standard, engages and embraces everyone, everything, everywhere.

Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you." (Luke, 6:38, NIV)

The word 'contingency' in philosophy means the absence of necessity; the fact of being so without having to be so.

Live well; die well. Right now. Without going anywhere.

Go nowhere. Let go. Go on.

Bewith!

May it be so with you!

Let's cancel the elections. Everybody go to the mountains. Look at the stars when it stops raining. And ponder: Is this what we mean when we say democracy? Or have we become a plutocracy?

Something has gone wrong. Everybody knows what it is. Democracy has died. Banks, insurance companies, and global corporations now own America.

It was a nice dream. Wealth defeats idealism. Give up your house. Give it to the bank. And get lost.

The five aggregates are empty.

There is no human self.

Only corporate America has a soul.

Only the corporation is a person worth our time and money.

Count me out.

I don't think I can stay awake for the end of the game. San Francisco jumps ahead by a run.

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

- Cold Mountain

The women come to visit Saskia with the broken ankle.

Everyone brings something.

Possibilianism is a philosophy which rejects both the idiosyncratic claims of traditional theism and the positions of certainty in atheism in favor of a middle, exploratory ground. The term was first defined by neuroscientist David Eagleman in relation to his book of fiction Sum. Asked whether he was an atheist or a religious person on a National Public Radio interview in February, 2009, he replied "I call myself a Possibilian: I'm open to...ideas that we don't have any way of testing right now." In a subsequent interview with the New York Times, Eagleman expanded on the definition:

"Our ignorance of the cosmos is too vast to commit to atheism, and yet we know too much to commit to a particular religion. A third position, agnosticism, is often an uninteresting stance in which a person simply questions whether his traditional religious story (say, a man with a beard on a cloud) is true or not true. But with Possibilianism I'm hoping to define a new position -- one that emphasizes the exploration of new, unconsidered possibilities. Possibilianism is comfortable holding multiple ideas in mind; it is not interested in committing to any particular story."
(--from Wikipedia)
http://www.possibilian.com/

Tell me a story.

Any one of them.

Of course I will question the story.

And it will answer.

The over-paid baseball celebrity strikes out, looking, to end his team's chance to advance to the World Series.

People who study Buddhism
Should seek real, true
Perception and understanding for now.
If you attain real, true
Perception and understanding,
Birth and death don't affect you;
You are free to go or stay.
You needn't seek wonders,
For wonders come of themselves.
- Linji (d.-867)

Not even the fact that a former government high official used to own the team can diminish the poetics of such muted conceit.

I remain a fan of the phantom team of Bedford Avenue.

That other New York team remains too...uptown... for this sbrodolone.

My meals lack a sherbert interlude.

Happy Birthday, Dad!

People sometimes talk about having an experience of God. I think God is no experience. I could be mistaken. "I" usually is.

O Master of the Secret, what is enlightenment?

It means knowing your own mind as it really is.
This is unexcelled complete perfect enlightenment,
In which there is nothing at all that can be attained.
Why?
Because the form of it is enlightenment,
It has no knowledge and no understanding.
Why?
Because enlightenment has no form.
The formlessness of all things
Is called the form of space.

- The Scripture of Vairochana

I like the notion that God usually is.

Artists, dead people, enlightened beings, and Christ Reality share a similar understanding. It is an understanding rooted in transparent awareness.

“We went into the building next door, and it was empty, and we went up to the tower, and nobody stopped us, so we just started working,” he said. “It’s crazy. This city is so huge and overgrown, the more you’re in the middle of things, the more you feel transparent."
(--TED Prize goes to J.R., Award to Artist Who Gives Slums a Human Face, By RANDY KENNEDY, Published: October 19, 2010, The New York Times) http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/20/arts/design/20ted.html?r=1&hp

We are already connected, or, interconnected, to one another and everything there is in the universe. This union or unity is our ground reality. Do we feel it? Do we know it? Are we it without feeling or knowing it? Can we be and act in such a way that being and acting are not a result of preference, thought, feeling, or obligation and necessity? But, rather, our being and action flow seamlessly into and through the core of reality which is our commonality, communion, and creativity.

On a website, "Beyond the Mind ..." dedicated to the views of Krishnamurti, this:

The Core

The core of Krishnamurti’s teaching is contained in the statement he made in 1929 when he said: ‘Truth is a pathless land’. Man cannot come to it through any organisation, through any creed, through any dogma, priest or ritual, not through any philosophic knowledge or psychological technique. He has to find it through the mirror of relationship, through the understanding of the contents of his own mind, through observation and not through intellectual analysis or introspective dissection.

Man has built in himself images as a fence of security—religious, political, personal. These manifest as symbols, ideas, beliefs. The burden of these images dominates man’s thinking, his relationships and his daily life. These images are the causes of our problems for they divide man from man. His perception of life is shaped by the concepts already established in his mind. The content of his consciousness is his entire existence. This content is common to all humanity. The individuality is the name, the form and superficial culture he acquires from tradition and environment. The uniqueness of man does not lie in the superficial but in complete freedom from the content of his consciousness, which is common to all mankind.

So he is not an individual. Freedom is not a reaction; freedom is not choice. It is man’s pretence that because he has choice he is free. Freedom is pure observation without direction, without fear of punishment and reward. Freedom is without motive; freedom is not at the end of the evolution of man but lies in the first step of his existence. In observation one begins to discover the lack of freedom. Freedom is found in the choiceless awareness of our daily existence and activity.

Thought is time. Thought is born of experience and knowledge, which are inseparable from time and the past. Time is the psychological enemy of man. Our action is based on knowledge and therefore time, so man is always a slave to the past. Thought is ever-limited and so we live in constant conflict and struggle. There is no psychological evolution. When man becomes aware of the movement of his own thoughts he will see the division between the thinker and the thought, the observer and the observed, the experiencer and the experience. He will discover that this division is an illusion. Then only is there pure observation which is insight without any shadow of the past or of time. This timeless insight brings about a deep radical mutation in the mind.

Total negation is the essence of the positive. When there is negation of all those things that thought has brought about psychologically, only then is there love, which is compassion and intelligence.

Krishnamurti first wrote a statement of the core of the teaching in October 1981 for Mary Lutyens, at her request.

She included it in her book The Years of Fulfilment, the second volume of her biography of Krishnamurti.

On re-reading the statement in 1983, Krishnamurti made changes which are included above.

This is the complete and final statement.

Copyright © 2002 Krishnamurti Foundation Trust

(From the Spring Newsletter, 2008; paragraphs added)

http://www.beyondthemind.net/corequotes.html

Can we see through what is right before us? Can we be transparent, and therefore, seen through? What would be seen if what is looked at becomes looking as and is thereby only seeing itself?

Many years ago, I saw my sister into her death and through the story of our common parents, her family, and the notions of end-of-life and no-longer-here. I sat with her in the hospital for eight weeks. I fell asleep and she fell asleep. She remained asleep and when I opened my eyes there was a quiet in the room that no number of people attending vigil could penetrate. What was seen through?

This morning's sun slants through the small window in this cluttered room. Saskia, in her foot-cast-boot, is one week into knitting-anklebone recovering in the Wohnkuche. I don't go rowing. I will tidy the kitchen for Wednesday hospitality. Then, make coffee, toast, and eggs for visitors. Whereupon I will prepare midterm experience for tonight's ethics class. I'll walk the dog. Sit zazen. Stoke the woodstove. Observe the rituals of the day.

This is what is seeing through.

This is what is seen through.

Love compassion and intelligence.

Each is the other, hence, there is no other.

Here we are, strolling the pathless land ...

From Prakriti to Purusha. That which gives shape and that which is clear creative consciousness.

After awakening, it is still necessary to observe and examine yourself. When errant thoughts suddenly arise, do not go along with them at all; reduce them, reduce them, until you reach the point of noncontrivance, which alone is the ultimate end. This is the ox-herding practice carried on by all illuminates after their enlightenment. Even though there is subsequent cultivation, they have already realized sudden enlightenment.
- Master Chinul (1158-1210)

The cycle repeats. We must not try to stop or freeze it.

We live in an extended, dualistic, world.

We need to be attentive. Be awake. Be present.

Everything alive moves.

Even stillness.

Breathes.

Rangers beat Yankees to take AL lead 2-1. Lee pitched so sharply that Yankees were numb.
It's the playoffs.

Election's not until a few weeks. There's time for statistics that don't mean as much as other statistics.

What happens in politics has become numbing.

We need wisdom. And compassion. Until then, we'll take a shutout against New York.

What sages learn
Is to return their nature
To the beginning
And let their minds
Travel freely in
Openness.
What developed people
Learn is to link their nature
To vast emptiness and
Become aware of the
Silent infinite.
- Huai-nan-tzu

I still root for the Brooklyn Dodgers of the 1950s. The Yankees were too uptown for us. The Giants were like the Mets -- too marginal.

Tommy's keeping stats on Harden Avenue tonight.

I read tonight that Connie Conover, our lighthouse keeper at Curtis Island, has died.

That's a loss much more valuable than sports or politics. His summer was one of preparation for leaving the island. I waved to him every morning in July and August and into September as I rowed around the island until he returned ashore in the Boston Whaler.

He was a sweet man.

I would like to be more aware of the silent.

Infinite.

The stones become flesh when mind realizes the expanse of the dharma.

There's nothing mysterious about that sentence. Flesh and stones are not two things. Unless you think they are, then for you, they are.

One continuous clear void, the night precisely midway; the moon, cool, spews frost. When light and dark are merged without division, who distinguishes relative and absolute herein?

Thus it is said, "Although the absolute is absolute, yet it is relative; although the relative is relative, yet it is complete." At this precise moment, how do you discern? How clear. Twin shining eyes before any impulse! How stately. The eternal body outside forms!
- Hung-chih

We visit folks and drink tea in their kitchen talking about the brain, Alzheimer's, awareness, and the mystery of soul. It is, we agree, an awful experience to lose a loved one long before death arrives.


There is only mind. It's where we live. But at times the brain loses its connection, the key doesn't turn. It grows lonely and frightening.

We must become mediators between mind and the disconnected. Bridge. Passageway. Conduit.

Even if there is no recognition, we must be recognizable for everyone as long as life surrounds.

That men and women traffick others into the sex trade against their will is a disgrace and failure of compassion we must confront.

CONSTANTA, Romania

THE 15-year-old had been “trained” in prostitution in a nightclub in the southern Romanian city of Calarasi. Now, the sex traffickers were getting ready to sell her off to a Turkish brothel for $2,800.

Iana Matei, Romania’s leading advocate for the victims of trafficking, had made contact with the girl and offered to wait outside the nightclub in her car, ready to take the teenager away if she could get out on the street for a cigarette break. But the girl had tried to escape before, and had been beaten severely. Ms. Matei was not sure she would have the courage to try again.
(--opening lines from THE SATURDAY PROFILE, Rescuing Young Women From Traffickers’ Hands, By SUZANNE DALEY, Published: October 15, 2010, The New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/16/world/europe/16romania.html)

When I think of chastity or celibacy I think of the non-sex trade. All slavery is heartbreaking.

If you can get through
The world by following
The Way and embracing
Virtue to the end of your years,
It can be said that you are able
To embody the Tao.
- Huai-nan-tzu

I offer this heart to those who are enslaved. And to those enslaving. All are in need.

Maybe our needs truly understood will diminish our wants.

We must learn to recognize the problem.

The problem is belief in separation and the illusion of disconnection.

See beyond problem and illusion!

In prison today Pat suggested the lack of self-responsibility on the part of so many in the world.

Ryan quoted from a film where an AA sponsor claimed we have an agreement, a covenant with each other not to go crazy on each other.

Earlier, in a repeat Awanadjo Almanac from 5 years ago, Rob McCall said "Don't cry, don't curse, just care."

The world is unstable, like a house on fire. This is not a place where you stay long. The murderous haunt of impermanence comes upon you in a flash, no matter whether you are rich or poor, old or young. If you want to be no different from a Zen master or a buddha, just do not seek outwardly.
- Lin Chi (d 867)

Don't go crazy on me.

Just care.

Watching, or pure gaze.

In hushed stillness.

We read in circle tonight.

Through green fog, red clouds,
Miles of bamboo,
To a hut where quiet lasts
Just let go and worries end
Stop to think and they're back
An unpolished mirror holds millions of shapes
A bell doesn't ring until it's rung
Your basic nature is the real Buddha
Not form or space nothing old or new.
- Stonehouse

Asking for presence.

Is God.

Realized.

The crisis of consciousness advances.

Make no mistake about it; if you do not find it now, you will repeat the same routines for myriad eons, a thousand times over again, following and picking up on objects that attract you.

We are no different from Shakyamuni Buddha. Today, in your various activities, what do you lack? The spiritual light coursing through your six senses has never been interrupted. If you can see in this way, you will simply be free of burdens all your life.
- Lin Chi (d 867

Awaken?

Or stay asleep?

It's anyone's guess as election time nears and the irrational perdures.

Of course there is a hell.

It's in all our stories.

Look in prisons. Look in the eyes of torturers and tortured. Look in the back rooms of pedophile's obsessions. Look in the anguished faces of abducted women forced to perform as sex-workers and men who have little humanity remaining them.

There is a hell. It resides in the decisions of governments to choose retaliatory war for acts only marginally connected with other governments which sit on geography laden with lusted after resources of minerals or oil or direct routes for transport of same.

Hell occupies offices of defense operatives in public and private sectors negotiating contracts for stinger missiles, 50 caliber munitions, fighter planes, unmanned drones, depleted uranium, and martial law.

Who marches into hell with a heavenly cause? How do mythic stories of heavenly or enlightened beings play in the world of pain and suffering promulgated as an economic strategy and national security priority?

Break open
A cherry tree
And there are no flowers,
But the spring breeze
Brings forth a myriad of blossoms!
- Ikkyu (1394-1481)

I can't help but marvel -- It is wonderful living in a place where the horror of war and terror of denied freedom is not felt personally with razor edged pain. It is a reminder that martial law, terror-as-tactic, and fear of reprisals for difference of opinion or belief, while not overtly sanctioned, is often hiding like a poisonous bite just out of sight, yet taking aim.

On mornings like this one -- when autumn air in Maine is cool at dawn and colors peek from mountain -- there is a lingering mood mingling with wood-stove smoke from house that says: Be grateful for the moment, and do not forget your brothers and sisters who need comfort in their suffering.

Story
by Sabine Miller

Tell me the one
about the sick girl —
not terminally ill, just years in bed
with this mysterious fever —
who hires a man
to murder her — you know,
so the family is spared
the blight of a suicide —
and the man comes
in the night, a strong man,
and nothing is spoken
—he takes the pillow
to her face — tell me
how he is haunted the rest
of his life — did he
or didn't he
do the right thing — tell me
how he is forgiven,
and marries, and has
2 daughters, and is happy —
no, tell me she doesn't
die, but is cured and
gives her life to God,
and becomes a hand-holder for
men on death row —
tell me the one where the man
falls in love with the girl
and can't do it, or
the girl falls in love
with a dog and calls
the man to tell him
not to come, or
how each sees their pain
mirrored in the other's eyes —
tell me how everyone is already
forgiven every story
they ever told themselves
about living
or not living —
tell me, oh tell me
the one where love wins, again
and again and again.
(--Poem, "Story" by Sabine Miller, from Circumference of Mercy. © Mountains and Rivers Press, 2010.)

Some say all of this existence is just story. Stories all the way down. Once, upon a time, until, the end.

Some others say that this existence is a testing ground or experiment in human quality for humans and a time of extended reach for other beings upward to a humanity seen as highest experience of sentience on precipice of an ascension beyond our ken.

Still others point out that earth is a statistical anomaly where the only life in the universe exists. Scientists and Ufologists have a different opinion -- but await further evidence.

Species have come and gone on earth.

Over 98% of documented species are now extinct, but extinction occurs at an uneven rate. Based on the fossil record, the background rate of extinctions on Earth is about two to five taxonomic families of marine invertebrates and vertebrates every million years. Marine fossils are mostly used to measure extinction rates because of their superior fossil record and stratigraphic range compared to land organisms.

Since life began on Earth, several major mass extinctions have significantly exceeded the background extinction rate. The most recent, the Cretaceous–Tertiary extinction event, occurred 65 million years ago, and has attracted more attention than all others as it marks the extinction of nearly all dinosaur species, which were the dominant animal class of the period. In the past 540 million years there have been five major events when over 50% of animal species died. There probably were mass extinctions in the Archean and Proterozoic Eons, but before the Phanerozoic there were no animals with hard body parts to leave a significant fossil record.

Estimates of the number of major mass extinctions in the last 540 million years range from as few as five to more than twenty. These differences stem from the threshold chosen for describing an extinction event as "major", and the data chosen to measure past diversity.

(--from Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extinction_event)

Some feel the insignificance of life on earth has to be viewed in a larger context.

Earth at a Glance: Fast Facts

Age -- About 4.54 Billion years

Location -- In the Solar System, on the outer edge of the Milky Way, about 28,000 light years from the galactic center (Source: European Space Agency). It takes the solar system 225 million years to make one full trip around the Milky Way.
Closest Major Galaxy -- Andromeda, about 2.3 million light years away.

Age of the Milky Way -- About 13.6 Billion years

Home System -- Solar System (One Sun)

Earth's Sun -- A medium sized, yellow star. Scientists call it a G2 star. It is the largest object in the solar system and contains 99.8 percent of the solar system's mass. It is located in the center of the solar system.

Distance from the Sun (average) -- About 93.1 million miles (also one Astronomical Unit or AU). -- It is the third planet from the Sun.

Farthest Distance from the Sun: -- 94.5 million miles.

Closest Distance to the Sun -- 91.4 million miles.

Speed through Space (around the sun) -- 18.4 miles per second or about 67,000 miles per hour.

Solar Orbit -- It takes Earth 365.2422 days to orbit the sun. This is the basis for the year.

Rotational Speed -- About 1,070 miles per hour at the equator.

Rotational Time -- It takes the Earth 23 hours, 56 minutes and four (4) seconds to make one complete 360° rotation.

Rotational Tilt -- 23.5° on its axis, a straight line through the planet from the North Pole to the South Pole. The tilt is in relation to Earth's near circular orbit around the sun.

Gravitational Pull -- One Earth Unit. This measurement is relative to other objects in the universe. Earth's gravity is the force that pulls objects toward the center of the Earth and is measured by the Earth's mass. Gravity is what gives objects their weight. Without gravity, the Earth's spin would fling everything on the planet out into space! See Earth's Weight (Mass), below.

Atmospheric Pressure -- 14.7 pounds per square inch at sea level. This is the measure of force exerted on objects by the weight of the air. Many times gravity and atmospheric pressure are considered one and the same thing. Actually, they are not! In fact, it is the Earth's gravitational pull on the atmosphere that gives weight to the atmosphere. The atmospheric pressure decreases above sea level, and it increases below sea level.

Earth's Weight (Mass) -- 5.972 sextillion (1,000 trillion) metric tons. That's 5,972,000,000,000,000,000,000 tons! Actually, scientists prefer to refer to this measurement as the Earth's mass instead of weight since weight is the result of

Earth's gravitational pull on another object. And the Earth cannot pull on itself! As the Earth orbits the Sun, it is weightless. If the Earth were placed on the Sun, it would weigh more than if it were placed on Jupiter, the largest planet in the solar system but much smaller than the sun. Yet, Earth (or any other object for that matter) would have the same mass regardless of where it is located.

(--from Ecology.com, http://ecology.com/features/earthataglance/youarehere.html

Meanwhile, the black and white cat is bothered by fleas. The white and black dog plays with green tennis ball. Brown leaves lay curled on crushed gray stone in front of barn doors.

We celebrated Canadian Thanksgiving yesterday with turkey, potatoes, and squash after canoeing Megunticook Lake into headwinds forcing us to turn and run into quiet cove where someone lay on floating dock curious about our appearance.

One thing I know is -- I am here.

For now.

And that suffices.

Hell be damned!

We long for peace and freedom for every species.

And if heaven has any cogency, let it be among and within us here and now.

Tell the story of the cherry tree and the spring breeze.

A heavenly myriadic blossoming!

There is so little we can do about injustice in the world.

We can be just. We can be loving.

Just a little.

It's a beginning.

You sit. You breathe. Just that.

But, why?

The Paradoxical Commandments

People are illogical, unreasonable, and self-centered.
Love them anyway.

If you do good, people will accuse you of selfish ulterior motives.
Do good anyway.

If you are successful, you will win false friends and true enemies.
Succeed anyway.

The good you do today will be forgotten tomorrow.
Do good anyway.

Honesty and frankness make you vulnerable.
Be honest and frank anyway.

The biggest men and women with the biggest ideas can be shot down by the smallest men and women with the smallest minds.
Think big anyway.

People favor underdogs but follow only top dogs.
Fight for a few underdogs anyway.

What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight.
Build anyway.

People really need help but may attack you if you do help them.
Help people anyway.

Give the world the best you have and you'll get kicked in the teeth.
Give the world the best you have anyway.
(Copyright Kent M. Keith 1968, renewed 2001)

We're in this together.

As soon as everyone realizes this, the better things will be.

It's a great illusion, separateness.

Be done with it.

Bewith one another.

Capitalism is not the answer.

Compassion is.

Help in disguise

When people are unsympathetic to you, and the world does not go as you wish, this should be a help to detachment of feelings from the repetitious cycle of becoming and decay, gaining and losing.
- Muso Kokushi (1275-1351)

Catching people out is not the answer.

Correct relationship is.

The Snow Man

One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;

And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter

Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,

Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place

For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.
(--Poem by Wallace Stevens)

First fire in wood stove.

"Two cord," I leave message on machine.

It really is -- compassion and correct relationship -- I know now.

Bewith.

It's a good word. A marriage of sorts. 'Be' takes 'with' for loving spouse. A new relationship.

If bewith is a new name, its pronounciation sheds light on older use of it when once seemingly stuck in duality. But now not.

"The Lord bewith you." Dominus vobiscum.

"Peace bewith you." Pax tecum.

Et cum spiritu tuo. "And with your every breath, bewith what is whole."

A new hearing of one of the many names sounding God.

John Fowles began his novel Daniel Martin (1977) with:

WHOLE SIGHT; OR ALL THE REST IS DESOLATION.

To be, seen whole, is great, consolation.

Bewith.

Bless you!

On further reflection, hermits neither go away nor send away.

Nothing needs to be added; nothing needs to be taken away.

Everything and everyone is already 100%. To be perfectly how and what and as we are takes no effort and requires no additions or subtractions.

Would you believe it?

I must strain to see
The few buds this old tree
Labored to open;
In pathos we’re one, and I wonder
How many more springs we'll meet here.
- Saigyo (1118-1190)

If we let go what we are not, if we let go what we are, we begin to realize that right here, right now, everything is being revealed as it is. Earth, heavens, universe, and all sharing dwelling therein and thereupon.

When we think of or call upon God we place ourselves in the joyful expectation and loving gaze of the one wherewith we live and breathe and have our being.

To say that I am made in the image of God is to say that Love is the reason for my existence, for God is love. Love is my true identity. Selflessness is my true self. Love is my true character. Love is my name.

If, therefore, I do anything or say anything or know anything that is not purely for the love of God, it cannot give me peace, or rest, or fulfillment, or joy.

To find love I must enter into the sanctuary where it is hidden, which is the mystery of God.

(-- pp.60-61 in New Seeds of Contemplation (1961) -- from Thomas Merton, A Book of Hours, ed. Kathleen Deignan, c.2007)

The white Border Collie enters zendo, bows & stretches (as he did after being blessed by kind man in Bucksport on Francis' Day), sits on my folded right leg on zabuton, revealing again the reality of mystery life and presence.

In this silence. in this gusty morning after heavy rain, leaves are sodden on soaked ground -- nothing needs to be added, nothing needs to be taken away.

Back in the house, Rokpa walks around with half biscuit in mouth, torn between burying it or eating it. He relents, jumps to couch, snuggles in, dozes.

We eat Farina with dried cherries and Greek yogurt. Sip coffee and tea.

Look out at gray day.

Sense God to be everywhere and nowhere else.

Bruno knew how to be a hermit. Tell them all to go away. Then, he did.

So few Christians want the correct relationship with God.

Perhaps it might better be called no-relationship with God.

"With God" is the only correct relationship. So many Christians want, instead, something perfect, sinless, pure. They do not yet understand that being-with God is, in itself, the way without anything other.

Learned friends,
Our self nature, Bodhi
Is fundamentally pure
And clean.
Use only this mind
Of yours for direct
Understanding and
Attainment of Buddhahood.
- Altar Sutra

There is nothing other with God.

Our usual concept of relationship suggests something other to be in relation with. That's where we lose our balance.

Let's say it this way: God is "with-us." "With-us" is God. The word 'with' does not mean next to. 'With' means in the middle of.

Be in the middle of God. God is in our middle. God is the between of no others. Center and core of everything without end.

This is incarnational. This matters. This is the self-realization of reality itself.

God is nowhere else.

If you think there is no God, there is no God.

But if you feel all alone, then you feel the close and intimate reality that some call God.

That close and intimate emptiness is what Buddhists call Shunyata, no-thingness. It is what Christians call being-with God, no-other God.

Someone asks why we want to know God.

Someone answers because it is the way we are.

Two peanut butter cookies later, it is time for bed.

Peace and what is good!

Francis said something about preaching always taking place, and sometimes words are used.

It is our every movement that must resound the sweet presence of what is most loving and most true.

For this we pray today.

Rokpa's birthday, he turns 3 today. On the feast of Francis. Pretty nice coincidence.

At Long Pond on Mount Desert Island as late afternoon quiets into dusk, we paddle between mountains.

Francis is half the inspiration of the hermitage. Dogen, the second half. Each thing and each being itself is the whole of it.

Relationship is the whole of it, not the attempt to make the parts fit together. Nothing fits. Only the relationship transcends and incorporates.

We are so fortunate to celebrate the day -- eucharist in Bucksport, hiking Flying Mountain at Southwest Harbor, canoeing with two Loons in silence.

Many paths lead from
The foot of the mountain,
But at the peak
We all gaze at the
Single bright moon.

--Ikkyu (1394-1481)

Each is all. Is peace! Is good!

May true poverty and simplicity dwell in such perfect joy.

It's all about relationship, not behavior.

We celebrate the Transitus of Francis at end of cabin part of Sunday Evening Practice.

Finally, when all God's mysteries had been accomplished in him, his holy soul was freed from his body and assumed into the abyss of God's glory, and Francis fell asleep in God.
(-- Bonaventure, Major Life.)

Francis died the evening of 3Oct1226.

It's all about relationship, not behavior.

For Francis, for all of us, everyone, this sweet and simple prayer:

Pie Iesu Domine,
dona eis requiem. Amen.

Sweet Lord Jesus,
grant them rest. Amen.
(--from Dies Irae, by Thomas of Celano, 13th C.)

It's all about relationship, not behavior.