Storm slowly approaches.

(Poem #882) Wind

This house has been far out at sea all night,
The woods crashing through darkness, the booming hills,
Winds stampeding the fields under the window
Floundering black astride and blinding wet

Till day rose; then under an orange sky
The hills had new places, and wind wielded
Blade-light, luminous black and emerald,
Flexing like the lens of a mad eye.

At noon I scaled along the house-side as far as
The coal-house door. Once I looked up --
Through the brunt wind that dented the balls of my eyes
The tent of the hills drummed and strained its guyrope,

The fields quivering, the skyline a grimace,
At any second to bang and vanish with a flap;
The wind flung a magpie away and a black-
Back gull bent like an iron bar slowly. The house

Rang like some fine green goblet in the note
That any second would shatter it. Now deep
In chairs, in front of the great fire, we grip
Our hearts and cannot entertain book, thought,

Or each other. We watch the fire blazing,
And feel the roots of the house move, but sit on,
Seeing the window tremble to come in,
Hearing the stones cry out under the horizons.

--Poem by Ted Hughes

There are books to be read and fears to be faced.

There's a collapse occurring. It's a little unnerving. Which is ironic in that we have lost our nerve to do what's right while the unscrupulous are not frightened & are full of nerve to do what is erroneous and injurious.

That, and the fact of an approaching hurricane!

As always, the moon
Night after night after night
Will stay on here
At this grass hut I put together,
And now I must leave.
- Saigyo (1118-1190)

This morning, for the first time, Rokpa accompanied us into the prison for a visit. He played soccer in the rec area of Close A, Protective Custody. He visited the Buddhist end of practice. He went with Fonz to the library. Guards gave him treats. Inmates scratched behind his ears and rubbed his rump. They talked of their own dogs. A scrum of more than a half dozen men returning to their cells stopped to surround and touch the white Border Collie. It was a good visit. Rokie was charming.

Still --

Where things seem to be collapsing is everywhere. Food, oil, money, housing, employment, crime, governance, wars, wars and revolutions, terrorism, political infantilism, media mockery, celebrity envy, executive corporate obscene salaries, head in sand, feet in tar sand, belief in belief and not in reality.

If I am walking with two other men, each of them will serve as my teacher. I will pick out the good points of the one and imitate them, and the bad points of the other and correct them in myself.
-- Confucius Saying on Learning

There is much to learn.

Let's not wait.

Let's begin now!

Steve Jobs resigns as Apple CEO. Next day my Imac crashes. Forty days ago the protection expired. Perfect!

18 Moses said, “Please show me your glory.” 19 And he said, “I will make all my goodness pass before you and will proclaim before you my name ‘The Lord.’ And I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy. 20 But,” he said, “you cannot see my face, for man shall not see me and live.” 21 And the Lord said, “Behold, there is a place by me where you shall stand on the rock, 22 and while my glory passes by I will put you in a cleft of the rock, and I will cover you with my hand until I have passed by.
(Ex 33: 18-22)

"Glory" has always escaped me.

Jesus said to his disciples:
‘Stay awake, because you do not know the day when your master is coming. You may be quite sure of this that if the householder had known at what time of the night the burglar would come, he would have stayed awake and would not have allowed anyone to break through the wall of his house. Therefore, you too must stand ready because the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect.
(Matthew 24:42-51)

Hurricane wends our way.

It feels like things are disassembling themselves.

No fear. Just the annoyances of existence.

Even as it all disappears.

Maybe things will change in October. Maybe some Mayan or Hopi prophecy will turn things upside down. I don't know.

I can only live second by second, day by day. The unknowable hasn't much allure.

Unknowing, on the other hand, is always at hand.

True perfection seems imperfect... but is perfectly itself. --Lao Tzu

It's never easy to like someone else's narrative about the unknowable. The unknowable is so...unknowable.

"Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and right-doing,
there is a field. I’ll meet you there.

When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.

Ideas, language, even the phrase each other
doesn’t make any sense"
-- Rumi, 1207-1273, trans. by Colman Barks and John Moyne)

The suggestion is that if we stay spiritually aware and without fear all will be OK.

A nice thought.

Worth sitting with.

Three quotes as epigraphs to sections of a novel:

A man is a god in ruins.
--Ralph Waldo Emerson

"In the beginning was the World,
And the World was God, and the world was good."
--Fragment from the Heretic Bible

"I beseech you, my brothers, remain faithful
to the earth, and do not believe those who speak to you of otherworldly hopes!"
--Also Sprach Zarathustra, Friedrich Nietzsche

It might be said that the story we tell becomes the reality we live.

Choose carefully the words of your story.

Care decisively for the reality you are, the reality you live.

When I say there is nothing outside,
Students who do not understand me
Interpret this in terms of inwardness,
So they sit silent and still,
Taking this to be Zen Buddhism.
This is a big mistake.
If you take a state of unmoving clarity to be Zen,
You are recognizing ignorance as a slave master.
- Linji (d. 867)

I would like to choose my words benevolently, tell the story benevolently, live my life benevolently.

Good will, yes, friends!

The universe, the inventor-scientist says, will become aware.

"Does God exist? Well, I would say, ‘Not yet.’"
-- Ray Kurzweil

I talk to a man studying to become a priest. He feels his church must also become aware

"Listen to the secret sound, the real sound, which is inside you. The one no one talks of speaks the secret sound to himself, and he is the one who has made it all."
— Kabir

Kurzweil thinks the singularity is near. Biological man will merge with mechanical/computational, nano-technological artificial intelligence. It will signal the end of what we have known as humankind and enter into a new techno-phylum distinctly different yet incorporative of the data-experience of human compilation.

This leaky, tumbledown
Grass hut left an opening for the moon,
And I gazed at it
All the while it was mirrored
In a teardrop fallen on my sleeve.
- Saigyo (1118-1190)

Maybe Lowell was right. Maybe:

We are poor passing facts,
warned by that to give
each figure in the photograph
his living name.
(--from poem, Epilogue, by Robert Lowell)

As I think about it, it seems that those two words serve as one good epigraph and one good epitaph:

"Not yet!"

Music of Thailand in the film stays beyond end. So much of our sanity the roots of our tradition. The Overture is the music.

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

Downpour subsides.

It is what emerges from between two sides that reveals what is next for us.

No winners; no losers.

Only this very step.

And this.

As a hermit, socializing in crowds is not my favorite activity. Nothing personal. Just awkward.

Bahá’u’lláh urges that Houses of Worship be made "as perfect as is possible in the world of being" and that they be befittingly adorned. The House of Worship has three prerequisites: it is to be circular shape, to have nine sides, and to be surrounded by nine gardens with walkways. The emphasis on the number nine comes from the understanding that this number, the largest single digit, symbolizes perfection, comprehensiveness, and unity. Nine is also the numerical value of the Arabic word bahá (light, glory) according to the ancient abjad system, in which each letter of the alphabet is accorded numerical significance.
(--from Mashriqu’l-Adhkár (Arabic: "Dawning Place of the Praise of God"), Term used primarily to refer to a Bahá’í House of Worship, also known as a Temple, and its surrounding dependencies.
http://www.bahai-encyclopedia-project.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=70:mashriqul-adhkar&catid=36:administrationinstitutions

One of the useful things about being a hermit is recognizing that solitude is a metier sans doute.

Without doubt one is alone in this thought.

Still, welcoming light.

Make it appropriate.

ORIGIN late Middle English : from late Latin appropriatus, past participle of appropriare ‘make one's own,’ from ad- ‘to’ + proprius ‘own, proper.’

Make it your own.

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?)

Because there's nothing out there.

Not.

In here.

See? Sea? Si!

Fog hides nearly everything at Rockland Harbor. Boat horn sounds rhythmically, probably ferry to Vinalhaven.

She "came out", the text says, "dancing to the sound of timbrels." Two months later, lamenting her virginity, she was gone, a casualty of a vow her father made for the Lord's help in defeating an enemy,

As Jephthah returned to his house at Mizpah, his daughter came out from it to meet him; she was dancing to the sound of timbrels. This was his only child; apart from her he had neither son nor daughter. When he saw her, he tore his clothes and exclaimed, ‘Oh my daughter, what sorrow you are bringing me! Must it be you, the cause of my ill-fortune! I have given a promise to the Lord, and I cannot unsay what I have said.’ (--from Judges 11:29-39)

As the fog lifts, the Breakwater Light shows itself, lobster boat slowing after fast crossing,

In second reading the guy without wedding garment is tossed on his ear.

“How did you get in here, my friend, without a wedding garment?” And the man was silent. Then the king said to the attendants, “Bind him hand and foot and throw him out into the dark, where there will be weeping and grinding of teeth.” For many are called, but few are chosen.’ (--from Matthew 22: 1-14)

This might not be a punishment. Nonconformity may be the kingdom. We have to be tossed into it.

Silence offers no explanation.

Comments, not commentary. There are questions. Such as: Why is virginity such a powerful notion in religious literature? Are we to suppose that not-being-born is a purer state that being-born? Or is remaining intact a metaphor for not buying into the fragmentation of dissolution and disintegration? Are we being tossed to Layman Pang’s thoughts about the ‘unborn’ --

The world over:

Men without wives

Women without husbands

Face to face,

Speaking of what is unborn.

(The Sayings of Layman Pang, #3: "One Gulp")

Which notion is artificial, and which authentic?

Kuei-shan asked Yun-yen,

“What is the seat of enlightenment?"

Yun-yen said,

"Freedom from artificiality.”

- Kuei-shan (771-854)

And then there is the wedding garment. Is a free meal a legal contract? Either it is a free meal or it is a legal contract. I’m leery of the King’s attitude. No one wanted to come in the first place, then those drafted have to conform to his dress code, resulting in an ignominious booting to someone garbed as an outsider. I’m glad the text prefaced the story with the word ‘may’ when it said: Jesus said to the chief priests and the elders of the people, ‘The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who gave a feast for his son’s wedding. [Emphasis added]

Or, maybe not!

When the Blessed Sacrament is placed in monstrance after mass on Thursdays, the invitation is to look -- to look, perchance to see.

Dance, child, you are never not whole!

Be tossed, man, nothing defines you from outside!

Not a single one of you people at this meeting is unenlightened. Right now, you're all sitting before me as Buddhas. Each of you received the Buddha-mind from your mothers when you were born, and nothing else. This inherited Buddha-mind is beyond any doubt unborn, with a marvelously bright illuminative wisdom.

In the Unborn, all things are perfectly resolved.

(-Bankei Yotaku, 17th century Zen Master, 1622-93).

Fog bank rolls out to see.

Good white dog with black spot saddle snoozes on linoleum floor next to Waterford 103.

Then moves to sunlit door when he hears the sound of a car stopping on the road, wondering...

What may appear?

Where do the dead go? Some into a box into the ground. Some into a crematorium and out as ash. Some would say that's only where their bodies go, That 'they' go to some spiritual place to begin a new kind of existence.

Names of the Dead
Last Updated: 12:20 AM ET
The Department of Defense has identified 1,723 American service members who have died as a part of the Afghan war and related operations. It confirmed the death of the following American this week:

CUNNINGHAM, Joe L., 27, Second Lt., Army; Kingston, Okla.; 179th Infantry, 45th Infantry Brigade Combat Team, Oklahoma Army National Guard.
(source: NewYork Times, 17aug2011)

I don't know.

Thus it is that we should not fear the arising of thoughts, just fear being slow to notice. It is also said, "When thoughts arise, immediately notice them; once you become aware of them, they are no longer there."
- Master Chinul (1158-1210)

I notice my thoughts want to take me elsewhere and pronounce other words.

Instead:

I wish this soldier God. And his family, also, God.

This embrace of disappearance!

Reading all day.

Barking

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

Except for mass in the morning.

The only question more important than "Does faith help you die?" is: "Is faith life itself?"

Thus, being a person of faith means the willingness to consider and accept life.

Today is the Feast of the Assumption of Mary into heaven. It's a good feast.

One definition of "assumption" is: "Taking to or upon oneself."

In India two persons meet. In English they say, "How do you do?" The Indian greeting is, "Are you upon yourself?" The moment you stand upon something else, you run the risk of being miserable. This is what I mean by meditation — the soul trying to stand upon itself. That state must surely be the healthiest state of the soul, when it is thinking of itself, residing in its own glory. No, all the other methods that we have — by exciting emotions, prayers, and all that — really have that one end in view. In deep emotional excitement the soul tries to stand upon itself. Although the emotion may arise from anything external, there is concentration of mind.
(-- from "Meditation," talk by Swami Vivekananda; Delivered at the Washington Hall, San Francisco, April 3, 1900*) http://www.ramakrishnavivekananda.info/vivekananda/volume_4/lectures_and_discourses/meditation.htm

I remember many people today -- the death of Jim's mom, the death of Heather's dad, the religious vows of a dear friend. Happily, death is not what we think it is. It is an uncharted mystery calling us through it. And canceling vows is a deep understanding of how life moves in mysterious ways through the years. Each year on High Holy Days we are called into a reflection about "All the vows" taken or to be taken in our lives. I've fallen through this cancellation.

We don't know. Perhaps we can't know. Our epistemology is a fluctuating wave and an uncertain footing. I, personally, do not know -- hardly anything, if anything.

And so, what seems paradoxical sits comfortably alongside.

As a Catholic I love Siddhartha Gautama the Buddha.

As a Buddhist I love Jesus of Nazareth the Christ.

Individuals, both. Not archetypes, not myths, not institutions. Individuals. As each of us is, or, could be.

If you can see a thought as it arises
This awareness will at once destroy it.
Whatever state of mind should come,
Sweep it away, put it down.

Both good and evil states
Can be transformed by mind.
Sacred and profane appear
In accordance with thoughts.
- Han Shan Te Ch'ing (1546-1623)

I no longer feel the need to defend -- (as if I ever needed to defend) -- religion against critics conflating or extrapolating disappointing details or dramas into wholesale condemnation or denigration. There are, it is undeniable, stupid, evil, unkind, and misdirected behaviors that reside within the structures grown up around the religious insights of ordinary or unusual people.

Today the thought arises that Max Muller's dictum "Whoever knows one [religion], knows none." -- might be expanded, I submit, to 'the only one religion is none of the above -- true religion is love and kindness,' and that all religions together are only a small attempt to penetrate that truth and translate it into everyday action by means of thought, prayer, and service.

It seems to me there is religion, and there is perversion of religion. 'Religion' is the response to the question, "What hold us and everything together?" To this question, the responses 'love' and 'kindness' arise. It is possible to suggest that anything not embodying the template and behavior of love and kindness falls short of 'religion' and doesn't hold together. Anything that purports to be religion yet offends and perverts the common understanding of love and kindness could easily be seen as the perversion of religion.

I suspect that the vast majority of people are dissatisfied with, and often shun completely, the 'perversion of religion' when they experience it. I also suspect that authentic 'religion' -- love and kindness-- whether done in the name of God, humankind, truth, earth, commonsense, or the appellations of Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity, Shintoism, Paganism, Islam, New Age, or None of the Above Agnosticism and Atheism -- is recognized and felt by any and everyone who has come into its presence.

The Broken


The spiders started out to go with the wind on its pilgrimage. At that time

They were honored among the invisibles -- more sensitive than glass, lighter

than water, purer than ice. Even the lighting spoke well of them, and it

seemed as though they could go anywhere. But as they were traveling

between cold and heat, cracks appeared in them, appeared in their limbs,

and they stopped, it seemed they had to stop, had to leave the company of

the wind for a while and stay in one place until they got better, moving

carefully, hiding, trusting to nothing. It was not long before they gave up

trying to become whole again, and instead undertook to mend the air.

Neither life nor death, they said, would slip through it any more.

After that they were numbered among the dust -- makers of ghosts.

The wind never missed them. There were still the clouds.

(--Poem by W. S. Merwin)

We might not be able to "mend the air" -- but we can honor the effort to see things as of a piece, whole and entire, even as the moving, flowing dispersion of forms into emptiness, nothingness moving through matter, and human understanding diminishing in the face of ungraspable mystery and mystagogy -- still, we long for a unified seeing wherein everyone and everything holds together.

We know that things fall apart. That's common to us. And yet -- and yet -- there is an ease with which what has fallen apart comes to itself again -- there is an intuitive and organic recollection and healing engendered by what we call love and what we call kindness.

I aspire to be what I am, a religious person. Even when religions fail, or the perversion of religion predominates, I trust that religion itself, in whatever form it might emerge, urges us through our yearning for love and kindness to the simple practice of love and kindness.

One breath at a time.

One person present.

Body, spirit, assumption -- the act of taking to or upon oneself.

To or upon.

Oneself.

Barn at dusk.

Dog on gravel at dusk.

No need to fabricate concepts. What we are looking for is right before us.

In the silence of this “night of faith” we return to simplicity and sincerity of heart. We learn recollection which consists in listening for God’s will, in direct and simple attention to reality. Recollection is awareness of the unconditional.
(--p.92, The Climate of Monastic Prayer, by Thomas Merton, c.1969)

Solitude is being-alone.

Community is being-with-others.

Between them, the conversation.

One day bloom. Next day gone

Morning chapel/zendo. Simple silence.

Evening. As sun goes down. Stern.

Brief, remaining, glance. Bow.

Between red nun and green can.

Darkness. Full moon.

Numquam se minus solum quam cum solus -- You are never so little alone as when you are alone. (Cicero)

The moon, just shy of full, hung behind Curtis Island out over the bay. I rowed back with it at 12:30 (the position, not the time) off stern while navigating rear-view mirror through maze of moored boats.

While everyone else
Is so busy striving,
The lone traveler
Is at ease by himself.
He's been living outside of convention
For a long time now;
In his pouch there is nothing at all.
When he walks,
He takes a cane for a companion;
When he talks,
He has the rocks for an audience.
If you ask him what his religion is,
When hungry it's a bowl of rice.
- Wen-siang (1210-1280)

Listening to James Finley on Contemplative Prayer as I row. Earlier this morning in prison we read Dom Christian de Cerge's testament from Algeria written before his death to be read after.

Later we sit with the Buddhist sangha and chant the Heart Sutra that Tony leads. Our final contact was with Olin telling us of the terrific work being done, inmate to inmate, about learning to consider living beyond labels. We talk about a directed college study of Kristof Kieslowski's films.

Philosophy matters. Art matters. Poetry matters. They can help.

The discipline of phenomenology forms one basic field in philosophy among others. How is phenomenology distinguished from, and related to, other fields in philosophy?

Traditionally, philosophy includes at least four core fields or disciplines: ontology, epistemology, ethics, logic. Suppose phenomenology joins that list. Consider then these elementary definitions of field:

Ontology is the study of beings or their being — what is.
Epistemology is the study of knowledge — how we know.
Logic is the study of valid reasoning — how to reason.
Ethics is the study of right and wrong — how we should act.
Phenomenology is the study of our experience — how we experience.
The domains of study in these five fields are clearly different, and they seem to call for different methods of study.

Philosophers have sometimes argued that one of these fields is “first philosophy”, the most fundamental discipline, on which all philosophy or all knowledge or wisdom rests. Historically (it may be argued), Socrates and Plato put ethics first, then Aristotle put metaphysics or ontology first, then Descartes put epistemology first, then Russell put logic first, and then Husserl (in his later transcendental phase) put phenomenology first.

Consider epistemology. As we saw, phenomenology helps to define the phenomena on which knowledge claims rest, according to modern epistemology. On the other hand, phenomenology itself claims to achieve knowledge about the nature of consciousness, a distinctive kind of first-person knowledge, through a form of intuition.
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/phenomenology/

The chapel is full and present.

Only silence and stillness can do it service.

One of these nights there will be a blockage, say, in my throat. And I will die. It's not a big deal. Only a blockage. Nor is death a big deal. The fear of which is only a blockage. When it occurs, I suspect I'll have a different opinion.

Grasshopper
by Ron Padgett

It's funny when the mind thinks about the psyche,
as if a grasshopper could ponder a helicopter.

It's a bad idea to fall asleep
while flying a helicopter:

when you wake up, the helicopter is gone
and you are too, left behind in a dream,

and there is no way to catch up,
for catching up doesn't figure

in the scheme of things. You are
who you are, right now,

and the mind is so scared it closes its eyes
and then forgets it has eyes

and the grasshopper, the one that thinks
you're a helicopter, leaps onto your back!

He is a brave little grasshopper
and he never sleeps

for the poem he writes is the act
of always being awake, better than anything

you could ever write or do.
Then he springs away.

(Poem by Ron Padgett)

Tell me about the Real Presence -- about the relationship of Form to Emptiness -- about where light goes when it goes 'out.'

What's that? Nothing to say? Hello?

Perhaps no one has ever seen God because God is not outside anything. That, and the possibility that what is 'inside' anything inside is only vast and open and empty space.

Of course I believe in God.

You have to be 'in' God to believe anything.

Mostly I believe that to return to God is to be really present, as who you are, right now.

Two eleven year olds played with Rokie a long while this afternoon -- to the delight of their doting grandfather with whom I drank coffee.

At conversation tonight we wondered about consciousness, form & emptiness, and true religion.

-- Why?
-- Because it is fun! And, too, we restore you because of who you are., Mallory Ringess, the pilot who will never die, ha, ha! We give you our memories because you must know.
--I don't want to know anything.
__ Oh, ho, listen, Man, and we'll tell you everything1 Do you hear the waves whispering the secret? We know you know, Man. The secret of life is just sheer joy, and joy is everywhere. Joy is what we wre made for. It is in the rush of the nighttime surf and in the beach rocks and in the salt and in the air and in the water we breathe and deep, deep within the blood. And the shifting ocean sands and the wriggling silverfish and the hooded greens of the shallows and the purple deeps and in the oyster's crusty shell and the pink reefs and even the muck of the ocean;s floor, joy, joy, joy!
-- No, life is pain, I know. There's a poem; I remember some of it: "We're born in our mother's pain and perish in our own."
-- Life will not perish. We give you these memories so life will not perish.
-- I remember the song of the Host of Restorers.
-- All of the hosts are restorers. That is what we are; that is what we do.
-- I don't want to be restored like this.
-- It is a great song, isn't it? Do you hear the song?
-- I'm afraid.
-- Ha, ha!

The song of Agathange is a great song, but it is a song most human beings would care to hear. Some parts, of course, given the wholely human heritage of that mysterious race, are understandable. Humans and god-men (or even most gods, I think) share the knowledge that matter and consciousness are inseparable. The knowledge is old; ages ago the mechanics found that it was impossible to describe the behavior of subatomic particles without considering the effects of consciousness on the objects they were studying, just as it was impossible to explain the disasterous thermodynamics and poisoning of the Earth, all the while ignoring the conscious and criminal actions of billions of human beings. ...So, the Agathanians revere the unity of consciousness and matter, and they have pushed their belief to the logical end. The ten thousand hosts of restorers were trying to awaken the whole of their planet to greater consciousness. The song tells of the great restoration: The first ecologists had not trusted their miniscule consciosnesses. Had man's consciousness saved Old Earth? No, and neither would Agathange be saved, because man was man, and someday -- even though they made themselves like seals and took to the sea -- the natural harmonies would be broken. Only by creating a consciousness far beyond their own, a World-soul, could they sing a song of total joy, which, after all, is what they sought to do.
(--pp.254-255 in Neverness, novel by David Zindell)

I'd like to hear that song.

Philip Levine is named to be new Poet Laureate. A 1999 poem by Mr. Levine is called “He Would Never Use One Word Where None Would Do” and ends:

Fact is, silence is the perfect water:
unlike rain it falls from no clouds
to wash our minds, to ease our tired eyes,
to give heart to the thin blades of grass
fighting through the concrete for even air
dirtied by our endless stream of words.

A silent song where words have grown familiar with not being spoken.

Not-being, spoken, is silence and joy!

Watching bats fly from barn.

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

Last meeting of course in prison, Philosophy of Friendship.

There's nothing left but what we have.

Look around.

Do you see anything not there?

That's the idea!

Once born, stay aware of birth.

Once living, stay aware of life.

If you haven't attained clear, true vision,
This causes you to lapse into extremes,
So that you lose contact with reality.
- Yuan wu (1063-1135)

Once we begin to die, stay aware of birth and life.

Have I forgotten anything?

Oh yeah -- with gratitude for any and all love: my parents, my friends!

With continuation and good will for each.

I leave three pennies on bell buoy off-shore.

Just to feel human. That's what an inmate rehearsing Hamlet said about how he experienced the process of being directed in a play by a tough and caring director. It's This American Life -- always a good bet.

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

"I am Laertes," says one of the actors. He means it. Not just the part he played, but the realization of himself as not other than Laertes.

Being nowhere else is finding oneself everywhere.

ST: In the context of this aching or longing, how can we understand this idea of “the Palace of Nowhere” as our ultimate destination?

JF: The phrase comes from the Taoist sage and poet Chaung Tzu, who wrote: “Come with me to the palace of nowhere, where all the many things are one.” We therefore use the phrase “palace of nowhere” as a metaphor for contemplative fulfillment. That is, the palace of nowhere is a state of awareness in which we realize directly that ultimately nothing is real but love. Or that ultimately nothing is real but God. Or that ultimately the concrete immediacy of life itself is the concrete manifestation of the divine. The reference to “nowhere” means that as soon as we try to back up, to stand and claim what we seem to have found, that it will all slip through our fingers again. And so I deliberately use the phrase “palace of nowhere” to allude to this great paradox. The nowhere is the infinite ground of everywhere.

ST: If you were to imagine for a moment that Thomas Merton was still alive today, how do you feel he would be responding to the current world situation?

JF: I was in the monastery with Merton in the 1960s, during the Vietnam War. The Berrigan brothers would come there to visit him, and he corresponded with people like Boris Pasternak and Bob Dylan. He was one of the Catholic intellectuals who helped fuel the peace movement. My sense is that what Merton would say today would be consistent with what he was saying then. That is, we face the individual dilemma of estrangement from contemplative experience and the preciousness of our own lives, as well as society's estrangement from this awareness. And that estrangement perpetuates violence. Therefore the task of the contemplative today is to be a prophetic witness – a nonviolent witness to the preciousness of all life, at a level that precedes and transcends all ideological positions.
(- From interview with James Finley by Sounds True, http://contemplativeway.org/interviews/mertoninterview.html)

We are the prisoners we visit.

There's no need to resolve or justify or rationalize.

Nothing is real but love.

The day was already laden. Hiroshima is remembered. Transfiguration is celebrated. Silent sitting gathered four of us to be still, to chant, to listen to a reading, then have a circle reflection where each of us offer a response from our practice. We read "In Sync" from the current issue of Shambhala Sun: "When body and mind are synchronized, SAKYONG MIPHAM says, we can live with grace and dignity, grounded and in harmony with the world around us."

The theme of bravery radiates throughout the Shambhala teachings, which were introduced to the West by my father, Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche. The first kind of bravery is being free of deception. Through meditation we are less seduced by afflictive emotions and habitual patterns, so we’re not as frightened by egolessness. We are able to leap into the moment—which is the second type of bravery. Having taken that leap, we gain the vision of the Great Eastern Sun, the third kind of bravery, which reveals the sacredness of our world. Through that sudden display of courage, our whole world is illuminated. As my father put it, “You begin to experience basic goodness reflected everywhere.”

From that act of freshness, our mind is liberated from doubt and disbelief. Such a visionary approach leads to the fourth level of bravery: realizing the dignity of body and mind being synchronized.
(-- Shambhala Sun | September 2011, Excerpt from "In Sync")

Then there was the news from Afghanistan:

Copter Downed by Taliban Fire; Elite U.S. Unit Among Dead
By RAY RIVERA, ALISSA J. RUBIN and THOM SHANKER
Published: August 6, 2011

KABUL, Afghanistan — In the deadliest day for American forces in the nearly decade-long war in Afghanistan, insurgents shot down a Chinook transport helicopter on Saturday, killing 30 Americans, including some Navy Seal commandos from the unit that killed Osama bin Laden, as well as 8 Afghans, American and Afghan officials said.

The helicopter, on a night-raid mission in the Tangi Valley of Wardak Province, to the west of Kabul, was most likely brought down by a rocket-propelled grenade, one coalition official said.

The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack, and they could hardly have found a more valuable target: American officials said that 22 of the dead were Navy Seal commandos, including members of Seal Team 6.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/07/world/asia/07afghanistan.html

Someone at practice this morning said it was difficult for him to see the underlying perfection and goodness during the "samsaric depression" mentioned by Sakyong Mipham. That we cannot determine or control the events in Afghanistan, Somalia, Lybia, Syria, or the economic ghettoes of political pushers -- is cause to remind us of the need to go deeper into the silence beyond mind-noise and ego-shouting that deafens us.

Helping each other, service without requirement of recompense, praying for everyone and everything in the world -- these things assist the way we look at and see the world.

The Transfiguration story of Mount Tabor is iconic. The mythic resonance is inviting.

Let us run with confidence and joy to enter into the cloud like Moses and Elijah, or like James and John. Let us be caught up like Peter to behold the divine vision and to be transfigured by that glorious transfiguration. Let us retire from the world, stand aloof from the earth, rise above the body, detach ourselves from creatures and turn to the creator, to whom Peter in ecstasy exclaimed: Lord, it is good for us to be here.
It is indeed good to be here, as you have said, Peter. It is good to be with Jesus and to remain here for ever. What greater happiness or higher honour could we have than to be with God, to be made like him and to live in his light?
Therefore, since each of us possesses God in his heart and is being transformed into his divine image, we also should cry out with joy: It is good for us to be here – here where all things shine with divine radiance, where there is joy and gladness and exultation; where there is nothing in our hearts but peace, serenity and stillness; where God is seen. For here, in our hearts, Christ takes up his abode together with the Father, saying as he enters: Today salvation has come to this house. With Christ, our hearts receive all the wealth of his eternal blessings, and there where they are stored up for us in him, we see reflected as in a mirror both the first fruits and the whole of the world to come.
(--From a sermon on the transfiguration of the Lord by Anastasius of Sinai, bishop, "It is good for us to be here.") http://www.universalis.com/readings.htm

"Here" is all there is.

Some spell it - 'M.i.n.d.'
Some spell it - 'G.o.d.'
Some spell it - the 'T.r.u.t.h.' or, - the 'R.e.a.l.'

For me, the word 'here' covers it nicely.

As I sit on the porch of the meditation cabin wrapping the leather sleeve edge of my rowing oar with tarred string I hear this phrase with a new clarity -- It is good for us to be here!

What is good resides in the profound and supremely mysterious 'here.'

We seldom visit it.

The route is little known.

It goes by way of silence.

Listen with a listening sighting here.

I like Walt's poems. He likes them to rhyme. They have humor. In his nineties, he worries about his wife who is not well. Each fortnight is a delight to see them.

The debate continues about bodies and what is entailed with them.

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)

It's odd to speak of 'having' a body. Or 'being in' a body.

Went rowing at dusk. My body is still chilled.

Something blah this way hovers.

I hardly understand anything.

The world is as we see it. So, we see the world. And it is as it is.

The world we see is the world we get. And when that doesn't seem such a good deal, look again. There's something we're not seeing.

Step back on your own to look into reality long enough to attain an unequivocally true and real experience of enlightenment. Then with every thought you are consulting infinite teachers.
- Yuan wu (1063-1135)

About our wars:

Total Fatalities: 6,026
Operation Iraqi Freedom: 4,442
Operation Enduring Freedom: 1,584
(Updated June 5, 2011)
-- The Washington Post

Semel in anno licet insanire. ("Once in a year one is allowed to go crazy").

We don't yet comprehend that war is insane.

Nor that there is no one else to fight other than ourselves.

What's the big deal about real conversation?

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)

Listen to this.

Then, enjoy the discourse.

One word at a time.

Tide lowers. Ducks jete on to unsubmerged rocks covered with seaweed, nibble a bit, then tuck heads back under feathers. Nap time.

Mass, coffee, and novel Neverness at landing of Camden Harbor before going to other side to bail Jootje after last night's torrential rain and lightning storm.

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.
- Yuan wu (1063-1135)

Schooners dry their sails, tourists come to the water, Sibelius plays from public radio.

You must not go towards equality, but must start from equality. Starting from equality does not presuppose that everyone in the world has equal opportunities to learn, to express their capacities. That's not the point. The point is that you have to start from the minimum equality that is given. The normal pedagogic logic says that people are ignorant, they don't know how to get out of ignorance to learn, so we have to make some kind of an itinerary to move from ignorance to knowledge, starting from the difference between the one who knows and the one who does not know.
(--Rancière, Jacques and Lawrence Liang. "Interview with Jacques Rancière." in: Lodi Gardens, Delhi. February 2009. English)

We know.

What we don't know we know.

Tearing what we know and don't know from what we think we know or not know is the work of learning -- investigating what is torn.

Scissors help.

Glimpsing what is between us -- in that torn place -- also helps.

Infinite love, the mystery of God, sees we do not see, and sees for us what we do not see.

"A good traveler has no fixed plan, and is not intent on arriving."
- Lao Tzu

Life is it's own destination.

Here we are!

I see this. And this is all I see.

Summertime, and mornings are meditation in quiet spaces.

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.
- Yuan wu (1063-1135)

We pray for those whose own prayer needs companioning.

For those whose death is nearing, or has occurred -- recently, or further back, those lingering just on the edge of eternity.

For those whose story confuses them and those who long to be free of stories no longer needed, no longer theirs.

What would you see? The choice is given you. But learn and do not let your mind forget this law of seeing: You will look upon that which you feel within. If hatred finds a place within your heart, you will perceive a fearful world, held cruelly in death's sharp-pointed, bony fingers. If you feel the Love of God within you, you will look out on a world of mercy and of love.
( --from Lesson 189, paragraph 5, A Course In Miracles)

The day belongs to itself as we belong to ourselves as God belongs to everyone and everything.

Quiet spaces invite us in to reflect on and become what they are.

Until we are all praying for each other in whatever manner each prays.

Quietly.

As we come to see one another.

Source and fruit.

It's all gift!

Surprise visit from Rob, Randy, and Suzanne down from Belfast for Friday Evening Conversation.

Rob said to my “It’s great to see you here!” that, “It’s great for me to see you seeing me here.” A thread in the fabric of the meetingbrook community stitched closer through many years between Camden and Thomaston and Warren.

What you believe is what you see. The label is the behavior. Theory molds data. Concepts determine percepts. Belief-dependent realism. (p.21, "Mr. D"Arpino's Dilemma", in The Believing Brain, From Ghosts and Gods to Politics and Conspiracies, How We Construct Beliefs and Reinforce Them as Truths, by Michael Shermer, c.2011)

This morning’s practice reading from Thich Nhat Hanh’s You Are Here the moving story of the war veteran beginning again to live through and beyond the memory of killing children in Vietnam. A roomful of thoughtful reflections on our need to begin again in so many areas.

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)

I like the thought that what we believe is what we see.

And if you believe nothing...do you see nothing?

Nothing is the wholeness seeing nothing outside it.

What a gift!

Bald Mountain at dusk is wavy outline against remaining light.

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

This morning, out in Penobscot Bay during a 6.7km row, I leave a quarter on R2 bell buoy beyond Curtis Island and red nun, then a quarter on red and white channel marker bell buoy out past Sherman's Point. I leave these coins for mariners, alive or dead, who need passage toll.

You never know who might be in need of a coin for the ferryman. Some arrive unexpectedly. Some forget the cost. Some wander aimlessly in the wide and deep ocean trying to remember where they are going.

It's the least I can do. Even when kayakers or sea gulls remove the coins from the buoys an invisible purse serves the wanderer beginning their journey.

A peopled home is the ocean bed;
The mother and child are there;
The fervent youth and the hoary head,
The maid, with her floating locks outspread,
The babe with its silken hair;
As the water moveth they lightly sway,
And the tranquil lights on their features play;
And there is each cherished and beautiful form,
Away from decay, and away from the storm.
(-- final stanza of poem, The Drowned Mariner, by Elizabeth Oakes-Smith 1806-1893)

Wherever there is loss, there remains a way to go.

The people are being played for fools. One man not the right color has right wing ideologues slashing and spitting at phantoms and fantasies they call government. What they want is a government of their own kind with the power to subjugate and sequester.

If you can see a thought as it arises
This awareness will at once destroy it.
Whatever state of mind should come,
Sweep it away, put it down.

Both good and evil states
Can be transformed by mind.
Sacred and profane appear
In accordance with thoughts.
- Han Shan Te Ch'ing (1546-1623)

The right wing is in it's ascendancy. No one can stop them from their appointed disquisition and diatribe against those they consider other.

A hard time is upon us. Haughty times and heightened inequality loom.

Jesus has been appropriated and compromised by hacks and heinous intent. Where will the ordinary and simple take refuge?

A wasteland encroaches on civil sensibilities.

It is time to move deeper into a hidden geography.

Into the true desert of the heart. Into the vast emptiness of the mind.

Do not allow them the slightest inkling of false fealty. They must come to know they dwell in a desolate deception.

It is possible I am wrong.

That said, do not suffer fools gladly. We are in a hard and trying time.

In prison class on the philosophy of friendship today we read the final pages of Mark Vernon's book The Meaning of Friendship. There is an intimate relationality between philosophy, friendship, wisdom, and moral value. As, too, in the sound of the two words "adios" and "amigos."

There' a journey to make.

What You Have to Get Over

Stumps. Railroad tracks. Early sicknesses,
the blue one, especially.
Your first love rounding a corner,
that snowy minefield.

Whether you step lightly or heavily,
you have to get over to that tree line a hundred yards in the distance
before evening falls,
letting no one see you wend your way,

that wonderful, old-fashioned word, wend,
meaning “to proceed, to journey,
to travel from one place to another,”
as from bed to breakfast, breakfast to imbecile work.

You have to get over your resentments,
the sun in the morning and the moon at night,
all those shadows of yourself you left behind
on odd little tables.

Tote that barge! Lift that bale! You have to
cross that river, jump that hedge, surmount that slogan,
crawl over this ego or that eros,
then hoist yourself up onto that yonder mountain.

Another old-fashioned word, yonder, meaning
“that indicated place, somewhere generally seen
or just beyond sight.” If you would recover,
you have to get over the shattered autos in the backwoods lot

to that bridge in the darkness
where the sentinels stand
guarding the border with their half-slung rifles,
warned of the likes of you. 

(Poem by Dick Allen, "What You Have to Get Over" from Best American Poetry 2010, Scribner, 2010)

Most of what is important is just beyond sight in the open-hearted possibilities a reserved optimism allows.

These men are friends.

Over twenty two years visiting and conversing has warned and revealed the likes of me.

The night is quiet. For the moment, that is enough.

It is as if our heart and mind learned something only night teaches.

Everywhere -- in prison, on an island in Norway, in kitchens and street corners and quiet residential lanes away from cities -- actions are taken to rectify or irradiate some impedance, some perceived injustice or blind insult rendered and needing remedy.

Is some shabby variation of underground faux-justice playing out? Are we leaning toward something more immediate than our stated system of justice can pronounce?

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)

What's the difference between truth and illusion?

Not much. Except, neither of them are to be feared.

Only seen through.

With clear intent not to get stuck in either.

As Donne said, every man's death diminishes me.

I am much diminished by events near to home and around the world these days.

Maybe someone wishes to talk about gunning down youth on an island in Norway. Others might wish to talk about a woman who sang and drank and died in London. And still others might find themselves alone in a chair on a screened-in porch in the woods at the foot of a mountain.

It's an odd, funny, and disturbing world. Who knows the punch line?

Let go of all your previous imaginings, opinions, interpretations, worldly knowledge, intellectualism, egotism, and competitiveness; become like a dead tree, like cold ashes. When you reach the point where feelings are ended, views are gone, and your mind is clean and naked, you open up to Zen realization. After that it is also necessary to develop consistency, keeping the mind pure and free from adulteration at all times. If there is the slightest fluctuation, there is no hope of transcending the world. Cut through resolutely, and then your state will be peaceful. When you cannot be included in any stage, whether of sages or of ordinary people, then you are like a bird freed from its cage.
- Yuan wu (1063-1135)

The world is not a stage. We don't know our parts. We stand slack-jawed staring out at a series of stories that make no sense.

I don't expect to pass this way again. While here, might I be of some help?

A few seconds ago it was 7/22, 22:22:22 on the 24hr time piece. Just that

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)

It is time to end the Kabuki theater on the debt ceiling.

End ideology; begin reasoning together.

It is too hot for nonsense.

Let’s face it.

Mourn the sorrow in Norway.

Pray for sanity.

It's not a choice.

Solitude is the way the solitary retains sanity.

Yes, of course, there are other people. But 'society' is optional.

It is the memory of God that informs solitude.

What if there were no black men? What if there were no white men? No red men? No brown men? No yellow men?
Nor any hues depicting various women?

What would we do then? How would we refer to one another without referencing color?

Misty trees hide in crinkled hills' blue green.
The man of the Way's stayed long
At this cottage in the bamboo grove.
White clouds too know the flavor
Of this mountain life;
They haven't waited for the Vesper Bell
To come on home again.
- Ching An (1841–1920)

I tire of the facile referencing and quantifying, qualifying, categorizing and compartmentalizing.

What would we do without our modifiers and descriptors?

Everyone is Buddha. Everyone Christ. All free. No one owned by or owning of another.

A tree is a tree. A dog a dog. God god. You you. Me me. A passing car a passing car.

We have not all been here before; we've been here all along. Where anything is there we are and have been and will be until there is no until.

Well then -- what's this all about, this packaging and selling and opining and attempting to conjure, consecrate, conjoin, and conjugate?

Don't ask me.

I have nothing to add. Or subtract.

I find myself numberless. As all beings, are.

We are countless. We don't count. We're way beyond that.

Way beyond!

When an itinerant zen practitioner stops by to visit, everyone is better for it.

I ask him to bless our zendo. He sits a while. In the silence, unmuffled sounds from direction of his sitting. He rises, bows, invites bell three times, bows three times, and exits.

The place is blessed.

The hermit doesn't sleep at night:
In love with the blue of the vacant moon.
The cool of the breeze
That rustles the trees
Rustles him too.
- Ching An (1841–1920)

Once we are born, there is nothing we can do but live. Once we realize we are dying, there is nothing we can do but visit a zendo and bless it with our presence.

Each step along this path is the journey of enlightenment.

Whether sudden or gradual. An ordinary Joe. At end, ordinariness is our common embrace -- a transmission of gratefulness, a ceremony reminder at walkway edge to hold dear and let go what is passing through.

It is joyful! It is good!

Thank you, Kozan, ancient mountain!

What is in a name?

Yes -- what is is in a name.

When the mind is properly adjusted
And quietly applied
The Way is attainable;
But when you are too fervently bent
On it, your body grows tired;
When your body is tired, your spirit
Becomes weary.
When you spirit is weary, your discipline
Will relax, and with relaxation of
Discipline, there follows many distractions.
Be calm and pure, and the Way will be gained.
- Sutra of Forty Two Chapters

Only allow what is to sound itself through your name and you and I will be exactly what we are in this world.

In this way all is accomplished. In this way everything minds itself.

Nothing's wrong. There are no mistakes.

Follow, if you wish, this way of being.

What about not following nor having a following? Can we just be part of the journey?

What if there were nowhere to go and nothing to accomplish? Whence the journey then?

There's a stream, and there's bamboo,
There's mulberry and hemp.
Mist-hidden, clouded hamlet,
A mild, tranquil place.
Just a few tilled acres.
Just a few tiled roofs.
How many lives would I
Have to live, to get that simple.
- Yuan Mei (1716–1798)

Hot summer day in Maine. Sitting in shade in front of book shed, reading. Morning practice and Evening practice. We are so fortunate!

Without opinions what would I be?

Probably, free.

What is the Christ? Those who say it is the creative and creating energy which brings into being that which is -- these interest me.

Something brings into being that which is. "Christ" is as reasonable a nomenclature as any other symbolizing sound formed into a word.

From the treatise On the Mysteries by Saint Ambrose, bishop
(The sacrament that you receive is effected by the words of Christ)
We see that grace can accomplish more than nature, yet so far we have been considering instances of what grace can do through a prophet’s blessing. If the blessing of a human being had power even to change nature, what do we say of God’s action in the consecration itself, in which the very words of the Lord and Saviour are effective? If the words of Elijah had power even to bring down fire from heaven, will not the words of Christ have power to change the natures of the elements? You have read that in the creation of the whole world he spoke and they came to be; he commanded and they were created. If Christ could by speaking create out of nothing what did not yet exist, can we say that his words are unable to change existing things into something they previously were not? It is no lesser feat to create new natures for things than to change their existing natures (-- from Office of Readings, Feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel).

I like reasonable words.

They're much in demand for lack of them today.

May this feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel be a phrase contributing to a sentence of peace and prayer for peace in this desperate time.

Less depletion of creative energy would be nice.

Maggie spoke the simplest poetry at Quarry Hill, saying: "I'm only here to listen."

A temple, hidden, treasured
In the mountain's cleft.
Pines, bamboo such a subtle flavor:
An ancient Buddha sits there, wordless
The welling source speaks for him.
- Yuan Mei (1716–1798)

At prison, Charlie came to see what the character in Genesis saw of creation: "It's all good!"

We don't judge someone to be good, rather, they are good, and by seeing so we are sane.

Tommy and I talk baseball.

It was Podres pitching to Berra in 1955 who sliced it to left where Amoros made the grab.

Two years later Brooklyn was abandoned.

Birdsong in Bangor. Outside, on shaded asphalt near portable water dish, Rokpa hunkers in leaf-light.

We' taken first of 4 walks during 4 worker's comp audits driving Miss Saskia.

As flowing waters disappear into the mist
Every heart is its own Buddha;
To become a saint, do nothing.
Enlightenment: the world is a mote of dust,
You can look right through heaven's round mirror
Slip past all form, all shape
And sit side by side with nothing save Tao.
- Shih Shu (c. 1703)

I imagine someone asking: Have you been saved in the nothing of Tao?

I wonder if it would be useful to suggest I carry some particular adult onset peculiar syndrome rather than the equally odd narrative suggesting I carry a propensity toward being a hermit, an anchorite, or a lay monastic cosmotheandric solitary.

The leaves have nothing to say. Nor do clouds and breeze passing do anything but invite gaze. Grass and weeds, wildflowers and white birch move in synchronized laze.

"Friendship is trust your friend will reveal you." (17Feb2011). That's what I wrote then. Today I add: "At the same time a friend is someone respecting the undisclosed. The undisclosed is not something dark or sinister. It is the deep and hidden wholeness. I prefer to look at the undisclosed as that which is hidden from sight, in the same way the eye is hidden from sight but serves as that through which we see.

In Orono we walk past Shaw & Tenney by river construction of hydro project. Old yellow building and barns where fine oars and paddles are made. The car has been moved when I return from walk. Later I learn Saskia moved it to allow tractor trailer a wide turn.

In Lincoln Rokie swims in river. After a bit, I sit in Catholic Church for a spell. The smell of wood pulp plant and closed windows makes stuffy the small interior. One woman sits on opposite side, side window open. I open window next to where I sit. I like that some churches keep doors unlocked.

At lake in Lincoln we park in shade. A few months ago we walked on ice for an hour where now kids swim and play in water. I love the seasons in Maine!

In Milo we read. Two more hours on the road.

At root it is nature -- (what some refer to as 'creation') -- that intrigues. The other narrative, the religious stories that condense history and cosmos into discursive theologies and cosmogonies, that, too, is interesting.

We have to learn about metaphor.

Wind picks up.

The gods breathe hard. Lows and highs converge.

It is a lovely summer day on the road!

At tonight's sitting thoughts arise.

Three sets of words:

• Everything is as it is.
• God is what is God.
• I am as I am.

Later Gerard asks if I can simplify.
I say:

• As it is
• Is what is
• As I am.

One hundred eighty miles today. Milbridge and back.

Hot day followed by three sets of three words.

Three soundings of bell end our sitting,

Thanks, Benedict!
Hermit monastic contemplative.
The monk in me bows in silent appreciation.

"I thought it belonged to a puzzle. But, it's just a piece -- there's nothing else to put it into." That's what Tom said at evening practice.

Thomas Merton suggests silence.

No words, nothing, between you and things.

As dawn is.

A new intimacy of presence.

In creative silence the world presenting itself beyond analysis, revealing what is wholely seen and holy heard.

No barriers.

No separation,

Merely with.