Mu-ge, here shown guiding winter songbirds to their feeder, died today. Barnestown Road had one too many cars, we suppose, for him to elude.

The ground next to Koto, Jitai, Mini, Sandi, and Cesco is unearthing itself to receive his body.

We are saddened. We are also grateful for his 9 years with us.

And we are equally blest for someone like Tom who found him, waited for us to return home from town, and quietly, simply told us where he was.

I could hear waves hitting against the island but could not see it. Thick fog as I rowed the outer harbor. A solitude surrounding rare.

People cling to their worldly possessions and selfish passions so blindly as to sacrifice their own lives for them. They are like a child who tries to eat a little honey smeared on the edge of a knife. The amount is by no means sufficient to appease his appetite, but he runs the risk of wounding his tongue.
- Sutra of Forty Two Chapters

What is a mystic? Someone in the fog trusting a clarity unseen.

John Dear writes about Thomas Merton:

When Jesus calls us to love our enemies, he said we should do so because God does so. God let's the sun shine on the just and the unjust, and the rain fall on the good and the bad. God is compassionate to everyone, and we should be. too. This is the heart of contemplative nonviolence. Then we are able to see everyone as a human being, and to see God and become like God.

As we pursue contemplative peace like Merton, we learn, contrary to what the Pentagon tells us, that our God is not a god of war, but the God of peace; not a god of injustice, but the God of justice; not a god of vengeance and retaliation, but the God of compassion and mercy; not a god of violence, but the God of nonviolence; not a god of death, but the living God of life. We discover a new image of God. As we begin to imagine the peace and nonviolence of God; we learn to worship the God of peace and nonviolence; and in the process, become people of peace and nonviolence.

"The great problem is this inner change," Merton writes. "We all have the great duty to realize the deep need for purity of soul that is to say, the deep need to be possessed by the Holy Spirit."

On his way to Asia, Merton told David Stendl-Rast that "the only way beyond the traps of Catholicism is Buddhism." In other words, every Catholic has to become a good Buddhist, to become as compassionate as possible, he said. "I am going to become the best Buddhist I can, so I can become a good Catholic." That is the wisdom of Merton's contemplative life, to become like Buddhists, people of profound compassion, deep contemplative nonviolence.

That is what he discovered with his experience in Polonnaruwa when he wrote: "Everything is emptiness and everything is compassion."

(--John Dear, June, 2005, in Thomas Merton and the Wisdom of Nonviolence, San Diego, California, http://www.johndear.org/speeches/thomas_merton_wisdom.htm

This is what makes Merton so interesting.

On a day like today, the fog shrouds, the fog lifts, the fog returns, the fog converses with dusk in sounds only silence endears and endures.

A subtle interdependence.

The only freedom is choosing to be free even in unfree places.

For now, It rains.

We relaunch Jootje with help from Sam and Susan. We row around Curtis Island. In mid-day sun. That will be a rare time-slot for me.

We watch The Dhamma Brothers about Vipassana meditation in Alabama penitentiary. Good for them!

It is a characteristic tendency of human beings to indulge in emotions such as happiness, grief, or anger in response to present conditions, failing to balance these feelings with the awareness that present conditions are results of past causes. It is illogical to face the present only as an object of enjoyment or tolerance, neglecting to use it as the opportunity to create the future.
- Muso Kokushi (1275-1351)

To live life well now is to create the future. Now, then, whenever -- its' all the realization of true self, true nature.

That, and strawberries on vanilla bean ice cream, does the job.

New American flag flies at barn door opening.

It's a good country.

It could use some good, long, insightful sitting.

Solomon had an advantage over Obama. Both had a choice whether to cut the baby in half. In Solomon's story, he held a live baby. In Obama's, well -- listen to Mac Deford:

No Matter, the Baby Was Already Dead
6/30/2011 9:25:00 AM
Buzkashi: Game and Power in Afghanistan, by G. Whitney Azoy; 3rd edition, revised and updated, June 2011

by Thomas McAdams Deford

It's too bad President G.W. Bush, not to mention President Obama and General Petraeus, never read the one book that tells us all we need to know about the social and cultural underpinnings of Afghanistan, Whitney Azoy's Buzkashi: Game and Power in Afghanistan. It explains why our 10-year effort to remake that country was mission impossible.

The Afghan war will have cost us half a trillion dollars by year end, with 1,500 dead, and a multiple of that maimed or badly wounded. Last week, President Obama told us two things in his Afghanistan speech:

1) We've lost; and

2) It doesn't matter.

The Taliban, after being routed in six weeks nearly ten years ago, have managed to fight back against NATO forces that over the last two years have topped out at nearly 150,000 in addition to an Afghan force, armed and trained by NATO, growing from 200,000 to 300,000. The Afghan army already costs about $3,000,000,000 a year to maintain; by the time of NATO's departure, it will be up to $6 billion in an economy of $20 billion. Bernie Madoff's Ponzi scheme was nickel and dime stuff compared to this.
(--from The Free Press, Rockland ME)
http://freepressonline.com/main.asp?SectionID=50&SubSectionID=72&ArticleID=13517&TM=36100.4

We couldn't go into prison today because...the prison environment, including all involved in the environment, is the prison environment. And later in the day we were 15 minutes late for the nursing home. Walt couldn't read, he was too choked up, but Sheilah could, the Browning poem that reflected the 69 years of his and Maggie's marriage. They celebrated this week. Maggie is not well.

Deford adds:

Losing a war is poor politics. The spectre of the Taliban marching on Kabul in the fall of 2012, even with the majority of Americans against the war, would not help Obama in the voting booths a few months later. So he compromised: enough withdrawals to keep his liberal base in line; not enough to risk an Afghan collapse before the presidential elections.

As Pat Buchanan, the original conservative Republican - he was against both the Iraq and the Afghan adventures - put it, "our president did what comes naturally: he cut the baby in half."

True, but give Obama credit: the baby was already dead.

In January 2009, when Obama was sworn in, Bush had left him two lit dynamite sticks: the rapidly disintegrating economy and an equally rapidly disintegrating war in Afghanistan. He had to make sure both didn't explode at once. The "surge" then was a short-term political fix to a double whammy he had inherited. (Ibid)

I used to wonder whether war was merely an awful necessity. Now I sense it to be just another strategy option for political purposes.

War is a brutal choice to sacrifice lives for political gain.

What's wrong with war is our unenlightened mind. It's stupidity is breathtaking.

We need to remember to breathe.

To become enlightened.

To end war.

What do you say, baby?

We finish four weeks at Rockland Public Library leading conversations after four episodes of Joan of Arcadia. Delightful circles!

Why practice quiet sitting?
So you can really get a look
At your original mind.
You look at it coming, look at it going,
And then you know you're the original person.
This latter age has no deep faith,
No one practices the
Direct road to understanding.
All they do is flap three inches of tongue
And lose themselves in the muddle of the mind.
- Gensei (1623-1668)

Listen and see.

There was a line in the early episode spoken by God who said he doesn't appear, Joan sees him.

The more we listen the more we see.

Life, death, pain, suffering, joy, loss, grace, why?

We might never know, but we can feel.

15 years ago today on the feast of Peter and Paul we opened meetingbrook bookshop & bakery on Bayview Street by the harbor in Camden.

When we lost our lease due to the building being sold two years ago we decided, after briefly considering finding a new site, that we would fold back into the hermitage at Ragged/Bald mountains at the Snow Bowl to deepen the contemplative life we'd been living in the open the prior 13 years.

Some loss and some gain accompany every change. We've been happy. We miss the spontaneous encounters with market place 'pilgrims'. (I am reminded of this, playfully, when yesterday Brad P. extends his arm from Volvo window as I cross Atlantic avenue to library, places small sea shell into my hand, saying one word, 'Pilgrim!' before driving toward Sea street. How the reminders come!)

We enjoy the freedoms and solitude of release from so many external demands.

Tonight, at conversation, we continue the Wednesday evening Laura soul-friend conversations begun back then.

The cake Saskia made for evening conversation, and the fruit crepes this morning, were a lovely luck-of-the-draw celebration shared by Susan, Myles, Dean, Jayen, & Dirk. The invisible guests will have to remain anonymous -- with our thanks for their loving memory and belonging over the years.

Well tasted, with gratefulness, for the time.

There are times that any comment, save silent invocation of Mystery, is one too many.

The headline read: U.S. War Costs Reach At Least $3.7 Trillion And Counting

Like some text or scripture read in our daily hermitage practice, perhaps this piece deserves to be read without comment. Followed by silence. And reflection.

The President of the United States has told the American people and the rest of the world that even as the U.S. withdraws some troops from Afghanistan and continues to withdraw from Iraq, the wars will continue for some years. The debate over why each war was begun and whether either or both should have been fought continues.

What we do know, without debate, is that the wars begun ten years ago have been tremendously painful for millions of people in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan, and the United States, and economically costly as well. Each additional month and year of war will add to that toll. To date, however, there has been no comprehensive accounting of the costs of the United States’ wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan. The goal of the Costs of War project has been to outline a broad understanding of the domestic and international costs and consequences of those wars. The Eisenhower Research Project based at Brown University assembled a team that includes economists, anthropologists, political scientists, legal experts, and a physician to do this analysis.

We asked:

• What have been the wars’ costs in human and economic terms?
• How have these wars changed the social and political landscape of the United States and the countries where the wars have been waged?
• What will be the long term legacy of these conflicts for veterans?
• What is the long term economic effect of these wars likely to be?
• Were and are there alternative less costly and more effective ways to prevent further terror attacks?

Some of the project’s findings:

• While we know how many US soldiers have died in the wars (just over 6000), what is startling is what we don’t know about the levels of injury and illness in those who have returned from the wars. New disability claims continue to pour into the VA, with 550,000 just through last fall. Many deaths and injuries among US contractors have not been identified.
• At least 137,000 civilians have died and more will die in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan as a result of the fighting at the hands of all parties to the conflict.
• The armed conflict in Pakistan, which the U.S. helps the Pakistani military fight by funding, equipping and training them, has taken as many lives as the conflict in neighboring Afghanistan.
• Putting together the conservative numbers of war dead, in uniform and out, brings the total to 225,000.
• Millions of people have been displaced indefinitely and are living in grossly inadequate conditions. The current number of war refugees and displaced persons -- 7,800,000 -- is equivalent to all of the people of Connecticut and Kentucky fleeing their homes.
• The wars have been accompanied by erosions in civil liberties at home and human rights violations abroad.
• The human and economic costs of these wars will continue for decades, some costs not peaking until mid-century. Many of the wars’ costs are invisible to Americans, buried in a variety of budgets, and so have not been counted or assessed. For example, while most people think the Pentagon war appropriations are equivalent to the wars’ budgetary costs, the true numbers are twice that, and the full economic cost of the wars much larger yet. Conservatively estimated, the war bills already paid and obligated to be paid are $3.2 trillion in constant dollars. A more reasonable estimate puts the number at nearly $4 trillion.

The website with additional information is http://costsofwar.org/

Sophia, orthia!

If I have no opinion about a particular belief, then I cannot be a heretic. A heretic is someone with a different opinion. None had; none different.

Men will therefore see God if they are to live; through the vision of God they will become immortal and attain to God himself. As I have said, this was shown in symbols by the prophets: God will be seen by men who bear his Spirit and are always waiting for his coming. As Moses said in the Book of Deuteronomy: On that day we shall see, for God will speak to man, and man will live.
(--From the treatise Against Heresies by Saint Irenaeus, bishop)

I'm never sure what the problem is people have with God.

Perhaps it is their opinion God causes good or evil. I don't have that opinion.

God is the uncaused good. And evil is not that.

An opinion would be other than that.

I've none.

There is no other.

Live this well!
.

Watched Collapse. A whole bunch of pretty good assessment of current condition of the world.

For me the question is: While here, what can I do for others here? I don't mind the absurd existence we're asked to accept as normal. I don't even mind that the biggest, smartest, fastest, most ruthless get the best pickings.

What concerns me is whether I have the courage to live with the absurdity and attempt to be kind, to listen, and be present.

What a pain, these people with so much wisdom!
Even the Buddhas have trouble converting them.
They keep the sutra pages turning,
But never turn their mind;
Ten thousand volumes cram their bookshelves,
All for nothing!
They've sunk into the pit of fame and profit,
Day and night a prey to disquiet and fear.
Their hearts in the end care nothing for sincerity
But moment to moment plot some clever scheme.
- Gensei (1623-1668)

The corrupt get convicted. The rest of us get sick, enfeebled, and set to die. There it is!

At the Cancer Clinic

She is being helped toward the open door
that leads to the examining rooms
by two young women I take to be her sisters.
Each bends to the weight of an arm
and steps with the straight, tough bearing
of courage. At what must seem to be
a great distance, a nurse holds the door,
smiling and calling encouragement.
How patient she is in the crisp white sails
of her clothes. The sick woman
peers from under her funny knit cap
to watch each foot swing scuffing forward
and take its turn under her weight.
There is no restlessness or impatience
or anger anywhere in sight. Grace
fills the clean mold of this moment
and all the shuffling magazines grow still.

(Poem by Ted Kooser, from Delights & Shadows, Copper Canyon Press, Port Townsend, WA 2004)

That's us with magazines as we experience ourselves shuffling through this mortal toil.

Not quite sure what happens at the door.

The haphazardness, randomness, and chaos of trying to fit things together in disheveled fashion. I accept being what some might call a 'slob.'

slob
noun: informal her no-good slob of a husband: layabout, good-for-nothing, sluggard, laggard;informal slacker, lazybones, bum, couch potato; archaic sloven. (Apple dictionary)

It was an insight at evening practice. My room, car, desk, and barn are in a state of perpetual mess. I like to let things be. Where they are. As they are. The way they fall.

It helps when we are talking ideas about philosophy, spirituality, creativity, or covering the peapod against the threat of rain after brushing her with boiled linseed oil, pine tar, and turpentine. Everything is an act of unexpected fitting together after inquiry, expression, uncertainty, and experimentation.

For those who like certainty, order, and neatness -- who prefer to whip things and people into shape, this kind of laissez-faire must be hell.

Me and thee are curiosities -- as are our ways. Go figure. Or don't. It doesn't much matter either way. Figuring, as in figuring out, or figuring in, is a temporary form feeling equally empty. Ask the Buddhists.

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

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

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

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

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

For whatever we lose(like a you or a me)
It’s always ourselves we find in the sea.

(Poem by E.E. Cummings)

Poets know how to surround you with nothing -- or, perhaps, surround nothing with you.

In addition to his poetry, Cummings was also known for his play, Him, and for the travel diary, Eimi. Him consisted of a sequence of skits drawing from burlesque, the circus, and the avant-garde, and jumping quickly from tragedy to grotesque comedy. The male character is named Him; the female character is Me. "The play begins," Harold Clurman wrote in Nation, "as a series of feverish images of a girl undergoing anaesthesia during an abortion. She is 'me,' who thinks of her lover as 'him.'" In the program to the play, staged at the Provincetown Playhouse, Cummings provided a warning to the audience: "Relax and give the play a chance to strut its stuff—relax, stop wondering what it's all 'about'—like many strange and familiar things, Life included, this Play isn't 'about,' it simply is. Don't try to enjoy it, let it try to enjoy you. DON'T TRY TO UNDERSTAND IT, LET IT TRY TO UNDERSTAND YOU." Clurman believed that "the play's purest element is contained in duos of love. They are the most sensitive and touching in American playwriting. Their intimacy and passion, conveyed in an odd exquisiteness of writing, are implied rather than declared. We realize that no matter how much 'him' wishes to express his closeness to 'me,' he is frustrated not only by the fullness of his feeling but by his inability to credit his emotion in a world as obscenely chaotic as the one in which he is lost."
(--about E. E. Cummings,1894–1962, from The Poetry Foundation, http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/e-e-cummings)

I don't mind being lost. Like the messy house of my dwelling, something lost is preparation for the delight of discovery. Or, if gone altogether, it serves as the realization that need is a travelling belief.
As evening opens and closes itself by letting light go its way, so words are often lost in us, lost on us; not companionable the way feeling stays at elbow sleeve as we make our way through narrow passages.

Toward what we think of, what we call, home.

Fog tops Bald Mountain. I am back in Merton Retreat after 3 months. Guest brings card with Ho Tai raised arms, "Yes" it says. He's found a place. He's moved on. We wish him well.

I read Mary Tillman's Boots on the Ground, My Tribute to Pat Tillman. Her son died, the story goes, as a result of 'friendly fire' in Afghanistan, April 2003. It is a sad tale. Much that the family had been told was lie after lie. I am surprisingly moved, over and over, by the story.

How rich are the depths of God – how deep his wisdom and knowledge – and how impossible to penetrate his motives or understand his methods! Who could ever know the mind of the Lord? Who could ever be his counsellor? Who could ever give him anything or lend him anything? All that exists comes from him; all is by him and for him. To him be glory for ever! Amen. (Romans 11:33-36, Reading from Office of Evening Prayer)

Rokpa gets to go on two walks. The hermits are working solitarily this damp and rainy day. It is a good day to be an anchorite.

Anchorite: (female: anchoress; adj. anchoritic; from Greek: ἀναχωρέω anachōreō, signifying "to withdraw", "to depart into the rural countryside") denotes someone who, for religious reasons, withdraws from secular society so as to be able to lead an intensely prayer-oriented, ascetic, and—circumstances permitting —Eucharist-focused life. As a result, anchorites are usually considered to be a type of religious hermit, although there are distinctions in their historical development and theology. (--from Apple dictionary)

The rural countryside is dusked.

Not much can be seen when light fades.

I sought my soul, but my soul I could not see.
I sought my God, but my God eluded me.
I sought my brother, and I found all three.
(--Unknown)

In his commentary on the Sandokai, Shunryu Suzuki suggests that our effort for today is good-enough dharma; that tomorrow we will try again to make even better effort in the dharma.

So it is when I think about the pain of the Tillman family, and the many other families who've been told untruths about their loved-one's death in war zones. The pain for them is doubled -- the curious lack of respect in the name of some more vague objective on the part of those perpetuating the lies.

Tomorrow, perhaps, we will make a nobler effort to honor those dead in war with honest respect.

These brothers and sisters of ours gone to war, gone to death, gone from us!

We think the mind of the Lord is difficult to comprehend.

The mind of man is far and away beyond difficult.

John had a sense.

To keep his promise, God has raised up for Israel one of David’s descendants, Jesus, as Saviour, whose coming was heralded by John when he proclaimed a baptism of repentance for the whole people of Israel. Before John ended his career he said, ‘I am not the one you imagine me to be; that one is coming after me and I am not fit to undo his sandal.’ Acts 13:23-25
(--from Evening Prayer, Feast of the Birthday of John the Baptist)

The ego before the revelation of the true self is not the one that is coming after 'me'. That one, that true self, the ego cannot approach, cannot touch.

We have that sense too.

But to trust in it, to allow the going to be gone, that is the practice.

Telios philios! Complete the friendship.

Go well!

The conversation seemed to ask whether ‘God’ is a supernatural way of being that assumes form to participate in life within this creation, or, if what we call ‘God’ is the hinting wisdom of human interconnection with all of nature and particularly human nature to work toward the accomplishment of beneficial results.

In every human heart
There is one volume
Of the book of Truth,
But all is packed away
On the shelves, pages here
And pages there.
In every human heart
There is one score
For the music of Truth,
But all is buried
Under popular songs
And glamorous dances.
The person who would study
Should sweep away externals
And immediately seek
What has been there
From the beginning.
Only then will he be
Able to put this Truth to use.
- Hung Ying-ming

It influences the search for God.

As though God has gotten lost.

Needing finding.

In Ireland a woman in her 80s falls and breaks her femur. It is replaced. Her son phones and checks on her. She will heal. That's good to hear.

Elsewhere, a guest leaves without a word after a three month stay. When my father left, he with death 37 years ago today, a silence with deeper stillness ensued.

Such departures remind of transience and curiosity. Christ comes and Christ goes. Everything is to be received with mystery and allowed to go with gratefulness. Understanding and certainty are not always traveling companions.

What's there to look for?

Nothing.

Only surrendering to what it is -- as it is -- as we are.

That should be enough.

There’s laundry for outdoor line. Rokpa opens his eyes to see what the movement is. The green shade is lowered. Today begins summer. We prepare pea pod to return to harbor. We paddle canoe at dusk last evening on Hosmer Pond in profound gratitude for our nature, God’s nature, nature itself

The wind is still,

But blossoms fall,

Birds sing in the

Quiet of the mountain.

This is Kannon's wondrous wisdom: Ah!

(-- Ryokan)

At liturgy thus morning there is an invitation to do what we’d like to see and thus to be. The celebrant suggested it is not merely a matter of not doing to others what we’d not like to be done to us -- but to actively treat others as we would like to be treated.

Fair enough. Confucius was wise, but Jesus, he might be suggesting, embodied the wisdom. It might be a highly nuanced observation, but the conversation is not sabotaged by making the distinction. Here, quod erat demonstrandum, the conversation finds itself written and pondered.

POEM WITHOUT A TITLE

I say to the lead

Why did you let yourself

Be cast into a bullet?

Have you forgotten the alchemists?

Have you given up hope

In turning into gold?

Nobody answers.

Lead. Bullet. With names

Such as these

The sleep is deep and long.

(Poem by Charles Simic)

The sleep is deep and long. It is a curiosity that so much effort is placed in making bullets, muzzles, grenades, bombs, missiles, fighter jets, Apache helicopters, black ops, and stealth destruction.

But I digress.

It is summer.

And we are intelligent beings. There is some wisdom.

We’ve got to stop preferring abstraction and idealization and come to earth, embodying wisdom, living as if we truly believed in life.

I’d prefer to step into this creating attention within life on this earth.

Beginning a new season

When Pat Tillman was killed by his own men, there and then the war in Afghanistan ended. The charade began. That was April 22, 2003. Today is June 20, 2011. The charade has continued for 8 years and two months. Would that the American people weren't so easily fooled.

3 - Making thieves

When you praise worthy people, you make other people envious and quarrelsome.
When you value rare things highly, you turn honest people into thieves.
If you show people exciting things, you will make them covetous and greedy.
The wise rule by keeping the peoples' hearts empty (of desire) and their bellies full.
Making their bones strong and their ambitions weak.

Since the people are free of avarice and desire,
even the most cunning grifter has no opportunity to corrupt them.

By using the "act without action" principle,
everything just falls into place.
(ch.3, Tao Te Ching)

War is a lie. Inside the lie a deeper deception takes place -- a charade that says this is a glorious undertaking, heroic adventure, a decorous and patriotic pleasure to die in the service of your country.

Many have so died. I lament their deaths. I salute them.

But I look on those that send men and women to war with a skeptical wariness about the explanations and reasons put forth for the wars.

The charade captivates and enthralls.

We swallow the drugs and pass out.

We desperately need to come to!

James Finley talks about God being the air he breathes and moves through.

Because you grasp labels and slogans,
You are hindered by those labels and slogans,
Both those used in ordinary life and those
Considered sacred.
Thus they obstruct your perception
Of objective truth,
And you cannot understand clearly.
- Linji (d. 867)

Thich Nhat Hanh writes a gatha: Breathing in, I know I am breathing in.

Being within God -- clearly, no label.

Breathing out, Thay says, we smile.

Thunderstorms roll between mountains. We cover Jootje, Anna's double ender, on wood garden timbers in front of Merton bookshed/retreat on shore for scraping, panting, and pine tar/linseed oiling.

Seeing into Nothingness
This is the true seeing,
The eternal seeing
- Shen-hui (8th cent)

The world as we know it is the result of the minds of men who've fashioned it in their ideas and preferences. This same world can be refashioned in a clearer, kinder image with a little more awareness and self-emptying.

Let's consider that God, or that which we call God, is still unborn in this world. Yes, in the Christian metaphor, Jesus realized God-nature and embodied what is called Christ-consciousness. But what if his realization was only the inaugural of the potential of the process of allowing To Be that which we long for, namely, the Source, Oneness, Interconnectedness, & Stillness (SOIS) of each to each, all to all, now and forever?

SOIS, in French, is the present subjunctive of the verb Etre, to be. We suggest, require, and request that which is to be God in our midst.

Use the present subjunctive in statements that express a suggestion, requirement, or request.
-- LB Brief by Jane E. Aaron (Longman: 2002); The Brief Holt Handbook (3rd ed.) by Laurie G. Kirszner and Stephen R. Mandell (Harcourt: 2001).

There is, it is said, no time with God. God, soi-disant, is not the egoic creation of man. God, soi-meme en-soi, is oneself Itself.

To be oneself itself is the longing, I submit, of every being in existence.

One hears the words: "Although I'm old, I feel young"; (French: Bien que je sois vieux, je me sens jeune.)

In effect, although we are neither young or old, we call ourselves these things in this manner because it is the way of this world to cast everything in quantitative distinction.

We love to think about God. We would like God to come to be the way of the world, namely, source, oneness, interconnected, & still.

There are two deserts -- that of God and that of man. This is where we wander. Is this all we are to hope for? Is there something else we might see?

AIR

Naturally it is night.
Under the overturned lute with its
One string I am going my way
Which has a strange sound.

This way the dust, that way the dust.
I listen to both sides
But I keep right on.
I remember the leaves sitting in judgment
And then winter.

I remember the rain with its bundle of roads.
The rain taking all its roads.
Nowhere.

Young as I am, old as I am,

I forget tomorrow, the blind man.
I forget the life among the buried windows.
The eyes in the curtains.
The wall
Growing through the immortelles.
I forget silence
The owner of the smile.

This must be what I wanted to be doing,
Walking at night between the two deserts,
Singing.

(Poem by W. S. Merwin )

Let our singing be the chant of creation.

Just this!

Pay attention!

When I close my eyes, sleep comes easily.

Oneself as others.

What I call perfection of seeing
Is not seeing others
But oneself
- Chuang-tzu (3rd cent BC)

Because there is no others.

Only oneself.

Just.

As is.

Said.

Once I thought I was part of the whole.

Says the Tao Te Ching: “Once the Whole is divided, the parts need names.”

What can Man’s consciousness “say” about the Whole before putting names to it? Is the Whole a formal concept or has it a reality of its own? Even if it were a mere formal concept, its (conceptual) formality would equally belong to the Whole.

Having realized that consciousness of the Whole is both consciousness of the Whole (not of its parts) and the Whole’s consciousness (for there is nothing “outside” the Whole), consciousness is directed toward itself, that is, to introspection, interiority -- as Lao Tzu, the Upanishads, Aristotle, Augustine, and so many others remind us. They do not mean intimacy and solipsism, as it is sometimes interpreted. On the contrary, they mean the attempt to overcome the distraction of the parts to get in touch with the Whole.

In vedic parlance, the Whole is brahman, and the questioner in the Self, atman. Unless and until we have discarded ahamkara , egoism, we cannot even begin to philosophize. Philosophy is not hunting for entities and their links or causes in the critically polished field of consciousness. Philosophy is the opening of our purified conscious being to the self-disclosure of reality -- and this finds an obstacle in our ego. Without mumuksutva (ardent aspiration for liberating truth) philosophy is not possible. The culmination of this process is when the atman realizes atman-brahman.
Says Bhartrhari: “The attainment of Brahman is nothing more than loosing the knot [granthi] of the ego-sense in the form of ‘me’ and ‘mine.’”
(-pp.26-27 in The Rhythm of Being, The Gifford Lectures, by Raimon Panikkar)

Now I suspect I am the whole in individual form.

Which, of course, is emptiness.

Letting it go.

Moving on.

"Blessed To Be A Witness"

Corcovado parted the sky
And through the darkness
On us he shined
Crucified in stone
Still his blood is my own
Glory behold all my eyes have seen
Have seen

I am blessed
I am blessed
I am blessed
I am blessed
I am blessed to be a witness

Some have flown away
And can't be with us here today
Like the hills of my home
Some have crumbled and now are gone
Gather around for today won't come again
Won't come again

I am blessed
I am blessed
I am blessed
I am blessed
I am blessed
I am blessed
I am blessed to be a witness

So much sorrow and pain
Still I will not live in vain
Like good questions never asked
Is wisdom wasted on the past
Only by the grace of God go I
Go I

I am blessed
I am blessed
I am blessed
I am blessed
I am blessed
I am blessed
I am blessed to be a witness

I am blessed
I am blessed
I am blessed
I am blessed
I am blessed
I am blessed
I am blessed to be a witness

(Lyrics by BEN HARPER)

The line was meant to get a laugh. It went: “What you see is what you get.”

Don’t be afraid to look.

Two friends in prison study friendship with two friends not in prison.

Till now you seriously considered yourself to be the body and to have a form. That is the primal ignorance which is the root cause of all trouble.
- Ramana Maharshi (1879-1950)

The laughter you hear is the direct result of looking at what disagreements arise with Derrida, Montaigne, Aristotle, Kant, and Cicero.

Don't get me wrong, we like what they have to say -- that's why the argument.

Its a thing we have about keeping them ads honest as we'd like to be telling the truth of what we try to understand.

About.

And with.

One another.

When we are through, will we turn out the lights?

Following the talk, Adyashanti answered questions from the audience. A woman sitting near us, whose hands had fidgeted in her lap through most of the evening, took the microphone and said she was feeling a tremendous sadness because she feared that she’d never have an awakening experience. Adyashanti asked what her deepest spiritual yearning was. The woman answered, “I want to know God.”
Adyashanti asked the woman, whose name was Nancy, momentarily to stop her search for God and go in search of Nancy instead. “Where is Nancy?” he asked. “What is Nancy? If I ask you where is your hand, where is your foot, you can answer. But if I ask where is Nancy, where is she? She pretends to be the center of this whole life, but where is she? Is this Nancy anything more than a thought?”
“No,” she said.
Adyashanti described the tendency of the human mind to believe in a limited notion of “me,” a separate self at the core of our being. But when we go in search of that “me,” we discover something deeper and more vast. “What is looking through your eyes right now?” he asked the woman.
After a pause she answered, “It feels like life.”
“OK,” he said. “Let’s go with that. It’s life peering through your eyes. So what is life? Is life male or female? When is life’s birthday? Does it have an age?”
“No,” she responded.
“So, at the very center of this thing called ‘you’ is nothing but life,” he said. “It’s not Nancy; it’s life that’s peering through. Now, just for fun, let’s remove the word life. I like the word life. It’s very unspiritual. But since you’re in search of God, what if we replace the word life with God? Isn’t God life, the essence of all existence?”
“Yes,” the woman answered.
“God is peering through right now,” said Adyashanti. “In this moment.”
The woman seemed profoundly moved. “Whoa,” she said, her eyes widening.
“Hang with that for a while,” Adyashanti told her as she quietly took her seat and the next questioner approached the microphone. I noticed that Nancy’s hands had stopped fidgeting and were folded together peacefully in her lap.
— Luc Saunders--in Who Hears This Sound? On Waking Up From The Dream Of “Me” by LUC SAUNDERS and SY SAFRANSKY
http://www.thesunmagazine.org/issues/384/who_hears_this_sound

Perhaps when through, there is no need for lights either on or off.

Standing or sitting, they say, just do either -- only, without wobbling.

Through matter, spirit.

Through body, soul.

Through Jesus, Christ.

Through small self, cosmic consciousness.

Spirituality means awareness beyond the limits of self.

The body does not know how to discourse or to listen to a discourse. This which is unmistakably perceivable right where you are, absolutely identifiable yet without form, this is what listens to the discourse. - Rinzai (d.867)

That, and the Dallas Mavericks defeat Miami Heat.

A good feast day.

A satisfying conclusion.

Gone beyond.

No limit

Read articles, watch dvd again with and without commentary, remain puzzled about what happened and why the leadership of government and military decided to so baldly and badly represent themselves.

It is, as Pat Tillman would say, disappointing.

When you are free and independent, you are not bound by anything, so you do not seek liberation. Consummating the process of Zen, you become unified. Then there are no mundane things outside of Buddhism, and there is no Buddhism outside of mundane things.
- Yuanwu

Given the most benign benefit of the doubt, lies were the main ingredient. A more sinister doubt still has to be deliberated.

They never counted on his brother Kevin discovering that there was an initial investigation that vanished. They never counted on a mother and father who were strong enough to demand the truth about what had happened, and determined enough to rescue the real person that was Pat Tillman from the spin machine into which the Pentagon tried to feed his body.

Pat himself, after seeing the Iraq war firsthand and declaring it to be “so fucking illegal,” quipped to his fellow soldiers that the military seemed to be so inept that it couldn’t even construct a credible lie. How prescient was that?

Kauzlarich, like Boykin and all their ilk, has the spiritual depth of his own skin, which is what he is trying to save … whether in an exchange of faith for immortality or in deflecting the sorry truth onto a bereaved and angered family with cheap revival-tent accusations of “atheism.”

Mary Tillman, Pat’s mother, showed me a page from Pat’s journal when he was 16 years old. It was Pat’s reflection on why he had decided, once and for all, that he didn’t need organized religion. The entry was motivated by Pat’s grief at the death of an old family cat. Pat wasn’t comfortable with the idea that one could love another creature that was being excluded from the bargain in the afterlife. He and his brothers grew up between a river and the mountains, where they roamed countless miles and delighted in the ceaseless interplay of geography, climate, flora and fauna. In his journal entry, Pat speculated about this singular universality, and made up his mind that one didn’t need some anti-material monarchy buzzing with angels to accommodate himself to mortality.

Pat never felt separate enough from the world to despise the worms. And so Kauzlarich’s expression of fear and loathing for the world would have amused Pat.

Pat’s ashes are adrift from where they were scattered along the Pacific Ocean, mixing back into the elements with which he was so at home; while Ralph Kauzlarich and the Pentagon fret about a five-foot-two-inch mother who refuses to make them an offering of her fear. Surely Pat Tillman is laughing.
(--Playing the Atheism Card Against Pat Tillman’s Family, 7/28/2006, Truthdig, by Stan Goff)

At morning practice we listened after sitting and chanting to Adyashanti interview about identity and the illusions we cultivate around identity.

We shoot ourselves in the head, or are shot in the head by nameless others for reasons difficult to fathom, when we identify ourselves too closely with what we are not.

We are not the saviors of the world, much less the Middle East, or northern Africa, nor are we the drug policemen of any country, certainly not our own.

Something awkwardly delusional has infected our moral stability, and we lurch violently left and right smashing precious things -- like justice, decency, respect, truthfulness, and a primordial fairness that has been exchanged for power and fear.

Let’s change that!

Please?

Watched film The Tillman Story. Sad the death of one man. Sadder the death of trust that truth be told.

This matter (Zen) is like a great mass of fire: when you approach it your face is sure to be scorched. It is again like a sword about to be drawn; when it is once out of the scabbard, someone is sure to lose his life. The precious vajra sword is right here and its purpose is to cut off the head.
- Tai-hui (1089-1163)

The only thing that forestalls desolate cynicism is that someone knows the truth, even if hidden and distorted, someone knows what happened.

Knows the truth of a particular situation.

This belief, we might call it, is a sustaining hope during a time when belief and hope are desperate commodities to find.

Two thoughts: If we carry trust within us we'll be able to find it when needed; And we cannot misplace trust unless we put it somewhere we are not.

Trust is an inner reality. It is who we are when we are there where it is.

We must stay well within ourselves.

That's where, in silent presence, truth be told, word and act create new worlds.

There is a difference between believing in God and believing in God's way.

As soon as you sense any lingering or obstruction,
all of it is false imagining.
Just make your mind clean and free,
like space, like a mirror, like the sun in the sky.
- Yuanwu

God's way is clear like mirror, free like space.

This helps as we move through something.

Making God's way home.

Avidya, ignorance, runs deep.

Deeper still, beyond form, is emptiness. And yet, emptiness is form. It's not a matter of choice. It's a matter of weathering the ride through both.

It is all pervading, spotless beauty;
It is the self-existence and uncreated
Absolute
Then how can it even be a matter
Of discussion that the real Buddha
Has no mouth and preaches no dharma,
Or that real hearing requires no ears,
For who could hear it?
Ah, it is a jewel beyond all price.
- Huang-po (d. 850)

In the dream the book was a series of green paper bags inside each other. One had a glass dish with crumbs on it. This, I suspected, was a new concept in reading -- the reading of things engaged by the reader's so-called writing of the text in situ.

The book, it might be said, is in the bag.

Wisdom crumbs.

The harbor seal broke surface close to rowing boat.

When no thoughts have arisen and nothing at all is on your mind, you merge with the boundless and become wholly empty and still. Then your actions are not interrupted by doubt and hesitation.
- Yuanwu

Bell buoy to bell buoy.

These long quiet mornings just after sunrise stroke by stroke on Penobscot Bay with what is there.

With us.

Sometimes, in the silence, absent intent or will, there is merely now, with nothing else to distract.

To consider this, one allows stillness.

"The future is unchangeable, then?"
"We have a saying," she told me. "'We don't change the future; we choose the future.'"
(-p.102, in Neverness, a novel by David Zindell, c.1985)

No choice, then, no future?

What will the zen mind think of next?

One instant is eternity;
When you see through this one instant,
You see through the one who sees.
- Wu-men (1183-1260)

Help see me through this: If you see through the one, who sees?

“And while the future's there for anyone to change, still you know it's seems
It would be easier sometimes to change the past”
--Jackson Browne

No change for the choiceless.

Do you mind?

Return here. That's cushion talk at morning sitting.

When we are not present it's not only our absence, rather we have absconded here itself.

If you came this way,
Taking any route, starting from anywhere,
At any time or at any season,
It would always be the same: you would have to put off
Sense and notion. You are not here to verify,
Instruct yourself, or inform curiosity
Or carry report. You are here to kneel
Where prayer has been valid. And prayer is more
Than an order of words, the conscious occupation
Of the praying mind, or the sound of the voice praying.
And what the dead had no speech for, when living,
They can tell you, being dead: the communication
Of the dead is tongued with fire beyond the language of the living.
Here, the intersection of the timeless moment
Is England and nowhere. Never and always.
(--from poem LITTLE GIDDING (No. 4 of 'Four Quartets') by T.S. Eliot)

It's the same with alcohol. Man takes drink; drink takes drink; drink takes man.

It's not addiction to alcohol, primarily, it is theft of here.

Here is gone when human presence is missing. No one here.

So, sit on cushion, return here.

Save the world. Start here. Stay here.

At steamboat landing I drink Irish tea while tossing sticks into salt water for Rokpa. We walk boatyard where shrink-wrap is folded into sheds and slanting boatstands lean against each other after a long winter holding up boats on the hard.

It is that nether time between the official beginning of the season marked by Memorial Day and the veritable start with calendar summer and the 4th of July when visitors buy new sneakers and shorts and take in the shops. I bail peapod.

St Augustine's homilies on St John's gospel
The two lives
There are two ways of life that God has commended to the Church. One is through faith, the other is through vision. One is in pilgrimage through a foreign land, the other is in our eternal home; one in labour, the other in repose; one in a journey to our homeland, the other in that land itself; one in action, the other in the fruits of contemplation.
The first life, the life of action, is personified by the Apostle Peter; the contemplative life, by John. The first life is passed here on earth until the end of time, when it reaches its completion; the second is not fulfilled until the end of the world, but in the world to come it lasts for ever. For this reason Peter is told “Follow me”, but Jesus adds, “If I want John to stay behind till I come, what does it matter to you? You are to follow me”.
You are to follow me by imitating me in the enduring suffering; he is to remain till I come to restore the blessings that last for ever. To put it more clearly: let action, which is complete in itself, follow me and follow the example of my passion; but let contemplation, which has only begun, remain until I come, wait until the moment of its completion.
It is the fulness of patience to follow Christ loyally even to death; the fulness of knowledge lies in wait until Christ comes again, when it will be revealed and made manifest. The ills of this world are endured in the land of the dying; the good gifts of God will be revealed in the land of the living.
We should not understand “I want him to stay behind until I come” as meaning to remain permanently but rather to wait: what is signified by John will not be fulfilled now, but it will be fulfilled, when Christ comes. On the other hand, what is signified by Peter, to whom Jesus says “follow me”, must be realised now or it will never be fulfilled.
But we should not separate these great apostles. They were both part of the present life symbolized by Peter and they were both part of the future life symbolized by John. Considered as symbols, Peter followed Christ and John remained; but in their living faith both endured the evils of the present life and both looked forward to the future blessings of the coming life of joy.
It is not they alone that do this but the whole of the holy Church, the bride of Christ, who needs to be rescued from the trials of the present and to be brought to safety in the joys of the future. Individually, Peter and John represent these two lives, the present and the future; but both journeyed in faith through this temporal life and both will enjoy the second life by vision, eternally.
All the faithful form an integral part of the body of Christ, and therefore, so that they may be steered through the perilous seas of this present life, Peter, first among the Apostles, has received the keys of the kingdom of heaven, to bind and loose from sin. And also for the sake of the faithful, so that they may keep the still and secret heart of his mode of life, John the evangelist rested on Christ’s breast.
It is not Peter alone who binds and looses sins, but the whole Church. It is not John alone who has drunk at the fountain of the Lord’s breast and pours forth what he had drunk in his teaching of the Word being God in the beginning, God with God, of the Trinity and Unity of God — of all those things which we shall see face to face in his kingdom but now, before the Lord comes, we see only in images and reflections — not John alone, for the Lord himself spreads John’s gospel throughout the world, giving everyone to drink as much as he is capable of absorbing.
(-- from Office of Readings, Saturday of the 6th week of Eastertime)

The serrated blocks of launch ramp took a pounding during one of the winter stormy seas and are akimbo. A single orange cone serves as shy semaphore to offloading trailers as tide recedes.

I thought I heard that contemplation should continue until the time of completion of temporary evil. But the word was 'temporal' as in that faith will help the journey through temporal life.

There is much I do not see. If faith helps navigate through things unseen with confidence that all is well and all manner of things are well -- then, I embrace this trusting faith.

I put unfitting scored storm window for screen on southwest 2nd floor window of Merton Retreat, also a screen on new window of new bathroom in Saskia's mom's room, also known as repaired front room.

At Saturday morning practice, with Buddhist emphasis, sitting, heart sutra, reading from Sekito's Sandokai with Suzuki Roshi's help, circle reflection, metta, then bell chant, then coffee and toast.

Tomorrow we return to full Sunday morning practice mirroring Saturday's -- but with a Christian emphasis. The Quakers complete their visitation at meetingbrook this cycle and resume their Sunday Meetings at Children's Chapel in Rockport at 9am.

The words -- contemplative, zen, practice, hermit, silence, solitude, listening, simplicity, correspondence, as it is, and conversation -- all sound right during this quiet time.

More than right, they feel they are exactly what they say they are.

Tom and Lee over four weeks led a study of the Sandokai, a poem written in Eight Century China by Zen Master Sekito Kisen Diaosho.

In prison today we read from Joan Chittister's The Monastery of the Heart: An Invitation to a Meaningful Life.

At nursing home we read Oliver, Simic, Hall, Milosz, Merwin and a number of personal poems.

Mind has no color,
Is neither long nor short,
Doesn't appear or disappear;
It is free from both purity and impurity;
It was never born and can never die;
It is utterly serene.
This is the form of our
Original mind,
Which is also our original body.
- Hui-hai (8th cent)

The men in Protective Custody were interested to hear we consider them part of our monastic community. We're only practicing what is true.

Madmen

They say you can jinx a poem
if you talk about it before it is done.
If you let it out too early, they warn,
your poem will fly away,
and this time they are absolutely right.

Take the night I mentioned to you
I wanted to write about the madmen,
as the newspapers so blithely call them,
who attack art, not in reviews,
but with bread knives and hammers
in the quiet museums of Prague and Amsterdam.

Actually, they are the real artists,
you said, spinning the ice in your glass.
The screwdriver is their brush.
The real vandals are the restorers,
you went on, slowly turning me upside-down,
the ones in the white doctor's smocks
who close the wound in the landscape,
and thus ruin the true art of the mad.

I watched my poem fly down to the front
of the bar and hover there
until the next customer walked in--
then I watched it fly out the open door into the night
and sail away, I could only imagine,
over the dark tenements of the city.

All I had wished to say
was that art was also short,
as a razor can teach with a slash or two,
that it only seems long compared to life,
but that night, I drove home alone
with nothing swinging in the cage of my heart
except the faint hope that I might
catch a glimpse of the thing
in the fan of my headlights,
maybe perched on a road sign or a street lamp,
poor unwritten bird, its wings folded,
staring down at me with tiny illuminated eyes
(--Poem by Billy Collins)

If we talk with each other, if we listen with each other, we begin to remember who and what we are.

It's that simple.

Really.

What if Ascension is leaving relying on self and ego and moving beyond to non-egoic non-self?

What does that mean?

You cannot describe it or draw it,
You cannot praise it enough or perceive it.
No place can be found in which
To put the Original Face;
It will not disappear even
When the universe is destroyed.
- Mumon (13th cent)

That face is the one you are before mother and father are born and long after the origin is no longer spoken of.

Breath is both inside and outside the body at the same time.

As is what we call God.

We are in the process of being what is creating what is to be God now and forever now.

Amen.

Jesus made the journey so that when we make the journey we'll each have one another to journey with.

Yes.

At end of evening sit, three bells.

Just still the thoughts in your mind. It is good to do this right in the midst of disturbance. When you are working on this, penetrate the heights and the depths.
- Yuan wu (1063-1135)

Morning listening to Vigils on ocean.

Salting wood planks back at dock.

We attend parade.

We row to Curtis Island. Then around it. We arrive late for afternoon concert at Camden Opera House.

The retired army colonel introduced the civil war songs at the Down East Singers' concert saying it is about longing for the end of war, the pleas of warriors, the weariness and desolation. It's no wonder, he said, facing another dawn of terrible fighting, a prayer rises up.

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord:

He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored;

He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword:

His truth is marching on.

(Chorus)

Glory, glory, hallelujah!

Glory, glory, hallelujah!

Glory, glory, hallelujah!

His truth is marching on.

I have seen Him in the watch-fires of a hundred circling camps,

They have builded Him an altar in the evening dews and damps;

I can read His righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps:

His day is marching on.

(Chorus)

Glory, glory, hallelujah!

Glory, glory, hallelujah!

Glory, glory, hallelujah!

His day is marching on.

I have read a fiery gospel writ in burnished rows of steel:

"As ye deal with my contemners, so with you my grace shall deal;

Let the Hero, born of woman, crush the serpent with his heel,

Since God is marching on."

(Chorus)

Glory, glory, hallelujah!

Glory, glory, hallelujah!

Glory, glory, hallelujah!

Since God is marching on.

He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat;

He is sifting out the hearts of men before His judgment-seat:

Oh, be swift, my soul, to answer Him! be jubilant, my feet!

Our God is marching on.

(Chorus)

Glory, glory, hallelujah!

Glory, glory, hallelujah!

Glory, glory, hallelujah!

Our God is marching on.

In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea,

With a glory in His bosom that transfigures you and me:

As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free,

While God is marching on.

(Chorus)

Glory, glory, hallelujah!

Glory, glory, hallelujah!

Glory, glory, hallelujah!

While God is marching on.

He is coming like the glory of the morning on the wave,

He is Wisdom to the mighty, He is Succour to the brave,

So the world shall be His footstool, and the soul of Time His slave,

Our God is marching on.

(Chorus)

Glory, glory, hallelujah!

Glory, glory, hallelujah!

Glory, glory, hallelujah!

Our God is marching on.

Warriors fight for the good of their country. They trust their leaders to point them in the right direction.

We are grateful for our warriors. For their sacrifice. But for their attendant sorrows, we grieve.

Vow to achieve the perfect
Understanding that the
Illusory body is like
Dew and lightning. - Hsu Yun (d.1959)

War devastates.

Warriors need protection and our gratitude as they do for us what we cannot.

May their leaders be wise!

It is a time for wisdom and compassion.

This Memorial Day we remember and pray for all those dead and deadened by war.

Which includes most, if not all, of us.

If there is a way to get beyond war with it's deadening effects, we do not seem to yet know it or, perhaps, want it.

I long for that way.

It is for those deadened, and, those working to bring such a way of no-need-to-war, it is for these I pray.

For you.

And me.

And all we love.