Transitus.

Going through earth to God.

 

Chapter VIII
How Saint Francis, walking one day with brother Leo, explained to him what things are perfect joy.

One day in winter, as Saint Francis was going with Brother Leo from Perugia to Saint Mary of the Angels, and was suffering greatly from the cold, he called to Brother Leo, who was walking on before him, and said to him: "Brother Leo, if it were to please God that the Friars Minor should give, in all lands, a great example of holiness and edification, write down, and note carefully, that this would not be perfect joy." A little further on, Saint Francis called to him a second time: "O Brother Leo, if the Friars Minor were to make the lame to walk, if they should make straight the crooked, chase away demons, give sight to the blind, hearing to the deaf, speech to the dumb, and, what is even a far greater work, if they should raise the dead after four days, write that this would not be perfect joy." Shortly after, he cried out again: "O Brother Leo, if the Friars Minor knew all languages; if they were versed in all science; if they could explain all Scripture; if they had the gift of prophecy, and could reveal, not only all future things, but likewise the secrets of all consciences and all souls, write that this would not be perfect joy." After proceeding a few steps farther, he cried out again with a loud voice: "O Brother Leo, thou little lamb of God! if the Friars Minor could speak with the tongues of angels; if they could explain the course of the stars; if they knew the virtues of all plants; if all the treasures of the earth were revealed to them; if they were acquainted with the various qualities of all birds, of all fish, of all animals, of men, of trees, of stones, of roots, and of waters - write that this would not be perfect joy." Shortly after, he cried out again: "O Brother Leo, if the Friars Minor had the gift of preaching so as to convert all infidels to the faith of Christ, write that this would not be perfect joy." Now when this manner of discourse had lasted for the space of two miles, Brother Leo wondered much within himself; and, questioning the saint, he said: "Father, I pray thee teach me wherein is perfect joy." Saint Francis answered: "If, when we shall arrive at Saint Mary of the Angels, all drenched with rain and trembling with cold, all covered with mud and exhausted from hunger; if, when we knock at the convent-gate, the porter should come angrily and ask us who we are; if, after we have told him, `We are two of the brethren', he should answer angrily, `What ye say is not the truth; ye are but two impostors going about to deceive the world, and take away the alms of the poor; begone I say'; if then he refuse to open to us, and leave us outside, exposed to the snow and rain, suffering from cold and hunger till nightfall - then, if we accept such injustice, such cruelty and such contempt with patience, without being ruffled and without murmuring, believing with humility and charity that the porter really knows us, and that it is God who maketh him to speak thus against us, write down, O Brother Leo, that this is perfect joy. And if we knock again, and the porter come out in anger to drive us away with oaths and blows, as if we were vile impostors, saying, `Begone, miserable robbers! to to the hospital, for here you shall neither eat nor sleep!' - and if we accept all this with patience, with joy, and with charity, O Brother Leo, write that this indeed is perfect joy. And if, urged by cold and hunger, we knock again, calling to the porter and entreating him with many tears to open to us and give us shelter, for the love of God, and if he come out more angry than before, exclaiming, `These are but importunate rascals, I will deal with them as they deserve'; and taking a knotted stick, he seize us by the hood, throwing us on the ground, rolling us in the snow, and shall beat and wound us with the knots in the stick - if we bear all these injuries with patience and joy, thinking of the sufferings of our Blessed Lord, which we would share out of love for him, write, O Brother Leo, that here, finally, is perfect joy. And now, brother, listen to the conclusion. Above all the graces and all the gifts of the Holy Spirit which Christ grants to his friends, is the grace of overcoming oneself, and accepting willingly, out of love for Christ, all suffering, injury, discomfort and contempt; for in all other gifts of God we cannot glory, seeing they proceed not from ourselves but from God, according to the words of the Apostle, `What hast thou that thou hast not received from God? and if thou hast received it, why dost thou glory as if thou hadst not received it?' But in the cross of tribulation and affliction we may glory, because, as the Apostle says again, `I will not glory save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.' Amen." 

To the praise and glory of Jesus Christ and his poor servant Francis. Amen. 

(--from Chapter VIII of the Fioretti, THE LITTLE FLOWERS OF SAINT FRANCIS OF ASSISI)

Mirroring the passage each makes with Christ through the realization of what is human, the realization of heaven through earth beyond suffering.

The requirement is love.

The gift is love.

As it is given.

So, it is received.

In perfect joy.

Maybe I do have one watching over me.

Angel of God,
my guardian dear,
to whom God's love commits me here,
ever this day,
be at my side
to light and guard,
to rule and guide. 

(catholic - prayer to the guardian angel)

Maybe becoming Christ mirroring the life of God in the world is the call of holiness.

Tonight I feel heavy with dampness and soaking rain.

But it is October.

Month of Francis.

A good man.

Therese today. And friends in prison move to new facility.

We had warm, wet weather all spring.
Now, white autumn is clear and cold.
Dew frozen, drifting mists gone,
Bottomless heavens open over this
Vast landscape of clarity,
And mountains stretch away,
Their towering peaks an unearthly
Treasure of distance.

These fragrant woodland chrysanthemums
Ablaze, green pines lining the clifftops:
Isn't this the immaculate heart of beauty,
This frost-deepened austerity?
Sipping wine, I think of recluse masters.
A century away, I nurture your secrets.
Your true nature eludes me here,
But taken by quiet,
I can linger this exquisite moon
Out to the end.

- T'ao Ch'ien (365-427)

October rains in.

I'm sure of nothing.

And there I remain.

Thank you, September!

The ways of proclaiming
The Mind all vary,
But the same heavenly truth
Can be seen
In each and every one.

- Ikkyu (1394-1481)

Good morning, October!

Sitting at Rockport Harbor reading students' papers, the tide comes in. New moon high, it sloshes against and between granite blocks across canal sluicing Goosefare runoff.

The mere fact of it!

Just outside car window.

Enormity of water, nature, and being-here!

Children of light and the day, says morning, faithful to our parents.

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 living, the living give you thanks, as I do today." (--from Isaiah38)

I've been mistaken. I thought there was something other than love and truth. I've been wrong.

There is nothing other. Everything goes out from and returns to love. Everything originates and finds completion in truth.

Tell all the Truth but tell it slant

Tell all the Truth but tell it slant---
Success in Circuit lies
Too bright for our infirm Delight
The Truth's superb surprise
As Lightening to the Children eased
With explanation kind
The Truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind---
(Poem by Emily Dickinson)

If we are not what we think we are, what are we?

This is the truth: I am what I am.

As you are.

So we are.

Now this.

"God is with us." (Responsory to Ps.87, morning Eucharistic service)

God is.

With us.

What a lovely name!

Where are we?

Goose and gander. Actions have consequences. Do as we say not as we do. They hate our freedom (to do whatever we want to do). One bad turn deserves another.

Iran let's hikers go. That's good. Iran is imitating America's tactics. That's questionable.

Fattal began by recounting the horrible conditions of the prison in which they were held, including being kept virtually all day in a tiny cell alone and hearing other prisoners being beaten; he explained that, of everything that was done to them, "solitary confinement was the worst experience of all of our lives." Bauer then noted that they were imprisoned due solely to what he called the "32 years of mutual hostility between America and Iran," and said: "the irony is that [we] oppose U.S. policies towards Iran which perpetuate this hostility." After complaining that the two court sessions they attended were "total shams" and that "we'd been held in almost total isolation - stripped of our rights and freedoms," he explained:

In prison, every time we complained about our conditions, the guards would remind us of comparable conditions at Guantanamo Bay; they'd remind us of CIA prisons in other parts of the world; and conditions that Iranians and others experience in prisons in the U.S.

We do not believe that such human rights violation on the part of our government justify what has been done to us: not for a moment. However, we do believe that these actions on the part of the U.S. provide an excuse for other governments - including the government of Iran - to act in kind.

(--from, What media coverage omits about U.S. hikers released by Iran, by Glen Greenwald, Salon.com
MONDAY, SEP 26, 2011 10:27 ET)

The world is a dangerous place. What we once considered a good and moral thing -- telling the truth -- is now a very dangerous thing to do. Ask whistle blowers. Ask anyone in prison who tells what he sees. Ask the Mexican journalists murdered for writing stories about drug cartels. Ask political detainees anywhere.

My Christian friends like Jesus, that he stood up to those in power, that he was killed for their sins, and that they are saved in and by his blood. Perhaps what they do not understand is Jesus. He stood for what is right, personal, individual and communal, what is true and holy, immediate and real. He, (the Christian heretic might say), might not have been so interested in dying for anyone's sins. He wanted to show that life, the heavenly kingdom, was not some future time in some faraway place -- that it was right there right then as it is right here right now.

To understand Jesus, it has to be considered that he was born (came to earth), lived in the world (as not-other than the world), and went about doing good (teaching and healing), with engagement, kindness, and compassion, and presented a different, more mysterious point of view about heaven, God, and the true hidden nature of existence -- namely, the question: how do we come to see, understand, and dwell in the reality of God? He brought an unusual perspective. He saw something new and diaphanous when he looked at whomever and whatever was right in front of him. He was put to death because the powers that be, political and religious, considered him a dangerous antidote to the poison of control, security, and fear.

It is a counter-Christian stance to glory in the death of someone by attributing his death to a God-willed good thing that benefits you. But that's just my view of a monday in September.

Independent of material existence,
Which is ever an obstruction,
Do not cling to deluded thoughts.
These give birth to illusion.

Attentively contemplate this mind,
Empty, devoid of all objects.
If emotions should suddenly arise,
You will fall into confusion.
(- Han Shan Te Ch’'ng, 1546-1623)

Jesus came here to bring us here.

It was not a theater-piece of playacting intent on pleasing some producer-director. Not a performance after which, removing makeup and showering, he attends a post-play party shaking hands and sipping drinks. For the life of me I cannot relate to the triumphalism of evangelical murder -- the motif of sacrificial lamb or scape-goat carrying our sins to their deaths while we watch from a safe place and cheer them on.

What am I saying?

I'm saying that the language of God is God (as Rushdie put it) and that we are inadequate translators and interpreters. All our 'sacred scriptures' are a series of writings, like all writing, requiring discussion, debate, disagreement, conversation, and a humility that allows the open to remain open when we come to the realization that only God is God and we are not the managers of the One we call God.

To Be Elsewhere
BY HSIA YÜ, TRANSLATED FROM THE CHINESE BY KAREN AN-HWEI LEE

We met in a coastal village
spent a lovely night without leaving an address
going separate ways. Three years later
we meet again by coincidence.
The whole
three years spun a novel
we abandoned:
They fail to recognize themselves
as though meeting in another story
for an encounter.
One asks: Who are you, so cold and weary
The other says: I only know a thread is loose on my sweater
The more you pull it, the more it lengthens
until I completely vanish.
(Source: Poetry, June 2011).

I don't know who Jesus is in other people's minds. He disappears from viable view the more he is made some celebrity who, having been murdered in the movie is readying himself to have eternally tortured or summarily murdered those who don't like his performance or don't live up to some purity of creedal belief or excellence of behavior.

Is this why so many of Jesus' (so-called) followers are OK with torture? Is this why it is so easy to kill people in war or in abortion clinics (with scalpel or gun) or in death chambers of state prisons? If you believe your guy is the prince of slaughtered innocence for your benefit, it is a short walk over to the executioner's weapon to keep the world safe for the saved who now live in cahoots with those same people who killed Jesus.

I'm not buying it.

I'll take a pass.

I'll wait for the next bus.

In the meantime I meditate on the words of the early scribes, retranslated, who wrote: "The reality of God is between you."

You might have had it translated: The kingdom of God (or, heaven) is within you (or, among you, or, in your midst).

For the time being, I'm going to look around, look at each one of you -- look at every branch, stream, rock, bird, harbor seal, and sentient creature -- and contemplate the difficult and startling possibility that we've not seen it yet because:

The reality of God is between us.

And if (possibly) that is true, then where do we think we are when we ignore, insult, use mindlessly, harm, or kill the one -- that which is -- with and near us?

Let's take a hike and think about it.

Three hermits in same room at evening practice.

They go their own ways.

An empty room remains.

Still, silent, chairs.

In lower Manhattan the police are tired of democracy and act like tired bullies to protestors. It's understandable. Freedom to speak your mind is often met with a shove, an elbow, or mace. The police are ordinary people paid to protect wealth and property. They're only doing their job. In a capitalistic society that job requires strong measures against those who favor a more equitable system of shared resources.

But that's just one man's opinion. What's yours?

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)

Maybe I'm just being cranky.

Maybe the police suspect that sudden overthrow of their benefits and livelihoods is being planned. It is, but by the people they're protecting, not by the protestors. Maybe the training they are receiving from homeland security and counter-terrorism experts needs a practice forum to iron out the wrinkles in their roughshod tactics. Or maybe it's only a few macho guys intent on re-establishing their manliness by macing women and dropping young men to the ground who speak to them.

We need to be protected from these protestors. Wall Street has to be able to run its course.

Downhill.

Into the gutter.

But the protestors have taken to the gutters and are stealing the space where the runoff needs to flow into the sewers.

So complicated, isn't it, today's financial outlook?

The times are a stretched and weary rubberband fraying at the edges.

There was the Arab Spring. Is this AIAWA? Autumn in America with Anger?

Sometimes it's hard to know.

The Niagara River

As though
the river were
a floor, we position
our table and chairs
upon it, eat, and
have conversation.
As it moves along,
we notice—as
calmly as though
dining room paintings
were being replaced—
the changing scenes
along the shore. We
do know, we do
know this is the
Niagara River, but
it is hard to remember
what that means.


(Poem by Kay Ryan)

And even when you seem to know, it's hard to realize what you think you know.

Except that conversation is what takes place between us.

I prefer to live in-between.

Preparing for morning's workshop in prison.

Theme:

Spirituality

as

Simplicity of Awareness

Seeing and Feeling

What is

Here Now

A Forum of Questions, Poems, and Conversations

Lifetime Portfolio Project

Maine State Prison

Fri, 23Sept.2011

Bill Halpin

Meetingbrook

Five Questions for us to face: (questions developed by some of the inmates)

1. What emotional issues exist for us that we need to recognize prior to release?
2. What does it take to face and realize the emotional damage incarceration has inflicted on us?
3. What are we willing to say about the emotional experience of shame and guilt over committing a serious criminal offense?
4. Is there a need for us to develop a more realistic appreciation or understanding of how emotional and overwhelming release will truly be?
5. What do we feel will be the emotional impact of living with the undeniable stigma of being an ex-offender?

Finally:

Villager

What's wrong will always be wrong. I've seen him lean

against the house hours and glare at the sea. His eyes say

no boat will come. His harsh throated seemingly

good natured mother bends her back to the soil

and there at least all grows well. When I speak with him

his eyes move away to the sea and I imagine

the red in his face from drink is also from

some ancient tribal shame. To him I'm wealthy.

When we talk I know how wealthy I am.

The police have him on file: petty theft.

I'm certain he steals to make up for the nothing he finds

every day in the sea, and to find money for drink.

Some days a woman picks him up, a sister I'm told,

takes him away and hours later delivers him back

passed out. Next morning again he's propped against

the house, the tide out in his eyes. I imagine

his sister, if that's who she is, knows oblivion

is what he must have often to survive.

I have much to tell him. And nothing. I'd start

with the sea. I'd say, there was another sea something

like this long ago, and another me. By the time

I got to the point he'd be looking away and be right.

No two hurts are the same, and most have compensations

too lovely to leave. At night, a photo glows alive

inside him when his mother's asleep and the cops

aren't watching. It lights up in the dark

whenever he looks hard and by dawn has burned out.

I almost forget: he'd do anything for you. Love him

for what you might have become

and love him for what you are, not that far

from him. We are never that far. Love

everyone you can. The list gets longer and shorter.

We're seldom better than weather. We're nearly as good

as a woman we met in passing once at Invergarry.

Don't be sorry, for him or for self. Love the last star

broken by storm. And love you. You hold it together.

(Poem by Richard Hugo, in The Right Madness on Skye)

Tonight I am executed.

The Lotus (padma) is a very important symbol in India and of Buddhism. In brief, it refers to the complete purification of body, speech and mind, and the blossoming of wholesome deeds in liberation. The lotus refers to many aspects of the path, as it grows from the mud (samsara), up through muddy water it appears clean on the surface (purification), and finally produces a beautiful flower (enlightenment). The white blossom represents purity, the stem stands for the practice of Buddhist teachings which raise the mind above the (mud of) worldly existence, and gives rise to purity of mind.
An open blossom signifies full enlightenment; a closed blossom signifies the potential for enlightenment.
http://viewonbuddhism.org/general_symbols_buddhism.html

I do not want to forget the words: "I am you!"

Rest safely, Mark MacPhail.

Rest safely, Troy Davis.

I like how Cynthia Bourgeault speaks about the Trinity. Father as formless love. Son as love in form. Holy Spirit as the energy of love.

Kin to form is emptiness, emptiness form -- and the movement of attentive awareness being the vitalizing force.

Home after four days.

The world is...

As you...

See it!

Be-live!

What I thought might have been a mis-spelling of 'believe' became its own word. It looked at me, daring me to consider it a mistake, and I relented. It had its own consciousness and wanted me to reach out connectively.

Be-live, and you will be safe. For what? Or, from what?

Saved from moribund mental conceptual cloaking thought which sees everything through concepts, images, categories, opinions, or abstracting absences.

Saved, I submit, for active, present, alive, immediate, aware, and intimate inter-being and exchange of conscious experience where you are and as you are.

A writer named Robert Thompson references Ewert Cousins in his writing:

This is why I say that properly understood, Christ is the Christian word for the divine pattern of connection. Christ is not a person but a power. Christ is not the object of faith but the divine power that makes faith possible.

Here is where Ewert Cousins becomes our teacher. Cousins says that we experience Christ whenever we have the experience of a Power that includes and at the same time transcends our personal identity. We experience the Divine pattern of connection, Cousins says, when we see the world as others see it.

Out of personal experience, Cousins writes about what it is like to pass over into the culture, the experience, the consciousness of especially those who are different. For some time Cousins lived among Lakota Indians in South Dakota. He writes of his experience of passing over into the consciousness of the Lakota Indians: “I remember the day, while I was talking to a group of Sioux, that I felt my consciousness, as it were, extend itself out of my body and passed over into their consciousness. From that moment I felt I could see things from their perspective and experience their values from within their world. Also I could look back at my own world and see its values in a clearer light–and its limitations! I became increasingly aware of human values that the Indians preserved and that we had lost: their love of the land, their organic harmony with nature, their sense of time as a flowing process…I perceived their awareness of Wakan tanka, or God, in nature and in their lives.”

For a brief moment, Ewert Cousins looked at the world through Lakota eyes. He saw the world not as a Roman Catholic white man but as the Lakota saw it. The experience changed Ewert Cousins perspective of himself. But more importantly he saw the world with new eyes. (--from, Christ of the 21st Century
Posted by Robert "Voluptuous" Thompson under Voluptuous Thinkers, 5June2008) http://avoluptuousgod.com/heretics/?p=119)

Anchoring conscious experience in shared exchange.

Shared.

Located nowhere but in the loving exchange of what is between everyhing and everything else.

When the Trappist monk with large hands says, "This is my body," I be-live him.

The formless is where we find ourselves.

Form is where we are looking.

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)

All help is the hand of God, which is, I suspect, the hand of one our brothers or sisters.

Form is what emptiness is.

There will be no final quiz.

There is only a take-home.

We find ourselves in this way.

In prison we talk about the curious notion that if you don't think evolutionally you are not ready for the next necessary change that we will encounter needing our engagement.

Even those wishing to stop at being saved by Jesus have to ponder what it is Jesus is moving toward in his very being.

Everything, everything is passing through everything else on it's way toward nothing else.

No more, nothing else, no other.

Have this with coffee and toast!

In the film "For My Father" it is the mothers who hold the space.

Perhaps someone will say: “Had she not known before that he would not die?” Undoubtedly. “Did she not expect him to rise again at once?” Surely. “And still she grieved over her crucified Son?” Intensely. Who are you and what is the source of your wisdom that you are more surprised at the compassion of Mary than at the passion of Mary’s Son? For if he could die in body, could she not die with him in spirit? He died in body through a love greater than anyone had known. She died in spirit through a love unlike any other since his.
(--from a sermon by St Bernard, Feast of Our Lady of Sorrows)

In the end it is fire that transforms lives -- whether the fire of love, or the fire of explosives.

In the end we are left looking toward each other, trying to measure the distance between us.

Sorrow brings us to gaze.

Henri Bergson wrote, "The eye sees only what the mind is prepared to comprehend."

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)

Be prepared!

Mind is loosening its control.

I think we're heading for civil war.

I hope I don't have to get up off my cushion.

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)

Fire approaches.

We're uncertain about fire. We don't want to be burned, yet we still have little understanding that fire doesn't burn fire.

Sunrise

You can
die for it --
an idea,
or the world. People

have done so,
brilliantly,
letting
their small bodies be bound

to the stake,
creating
an unforgettable
fury of light. But

this morning,
climbing the familiar hills
in the familiar
fabric of dawn, I thought

of China,
and India
and Europe, and I thought
how the sun

blazes
for everyone just
so joyfully
as it rises

under the lashes
of my own eyes, and I thought
I am so many!
What is my name?

What is the name
of the deep breath I would take
over and over
for all of us? Call it

whatever you want, it is
happiness, it is another one
of the ways to enter
fire.
~ Mary Oliver ~ (New and Selected Poems, Volume I)

It gets, I suspect, harder to live.

I worry about my brothers and sisters.

The chapel/zendo is empty.

Again.

God is not anywhere.

God is everywhere.

Over and over!

And comes the 12th.

Rowing 7.08 kilometers in easy swells and light wind.

Rowing the bay in full moon. Night passage around two bell buoys.

Two hours, twenty minutes, twenty six seconds. Leaving coins for unseen mariners.

"No, I won't leave the world--I'll enter a lunatic asylum and see if the profundity of insanity reveals to me the riddles of life. Idiot, why didn't I do that long ago, why has it taken me so long to understand what it means when the Indians honour the insane, step aside for them? Yes, a lunatic asylum--don't you think I may end up there?"

(--Soren Kierkegaard)

One by one, days pass.

One by one, as do we.

Ten years.

Who can hear it?

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)

Who feels it?

There exists only the present instant... a Now which always and without end is itself new. There is no yesterday nor any tomorrow, but only Now, as it was a thousand years ago and as it will be a thousand years hence.
-- Meister Eckhart

Who is willing to be still and silent in its presence?

Words derive their power from the original word.
-- Meister Eckhart

Will we see?

You may call God love, you may call God goodness. But the best name for God is compassion. -- Meister Eckhart

Today, we remember, we watch, we are quiet

We feel.

Listening.

This is how we continue to live.

Naive innocence ends with 9/11.

The essential point in learning Zen is to make the roots deep and the stem firm. Twenty-four hours a day, be aware of where you are and what you do. 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. This is called the fundamental matter right at hand.

As soon as you produce any opinion or interpretation, and want to attain Zen and be a master, you have already fallen into psychological and material realms You have become trapped by ordinary senses and perceptions, by ideas of gain and loss, by ideas of right and wrong. Half drunk and half sober, you cannot manage effectively.
- Yuan wu (1063-1135)

If there is only God, then nothing exists beside God.

It is this nothing we remember.

"This", the mysterious one said a long time ago, "this is my body."

How do we see this reality?

Unknowingly.

Maybe the question isn't, "Where was God on 9/11?"

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

Maybe the question is: "Who wants to know?"

On Prayer

You ask me how to pray to someone who is not.
All I know is that prayer constructs a velvet bridge
And walking it we are aloft, as on a springboard,
Above landscapes the color of ripe gold
Transformed by a magic stopping of the sun.
That bridge leads to the shore of Reversal
Where everything is just the opposite and the word 'is'
Unveils a meaning we hardly envisioned.
Notice: I say we; there, every one, separately,
Feels compassion for others entangled in the flesh
And knows that if there is no other shore
We will walk that aerial bridge all the same.

(Poem by Czeslaw Milosz)

Milosz has it in his poem.

Reverse 'is.'

Learn another language.

Mary, mother of Jesus, has a birthday.

The Lord God called to the man. ‘Where are you?’ he asked. ‘I heard the sound of you in the garden;’ he replied ‘I was afraid because I was naked, so I hid.’ ‘Who told you that you were naked?’ (-Genesis 3:9-20)

No one is 'naked'. Forget shame, blame, sin. Forget what we've been told.

Mary knows this.

She prays we learn this.

- - - - - ==== + + + + + ==== - - - - -

Looking forward is looking back.

Washington Post reporter Dana Priest's Frontline examination of "Top Secret America" looks at the way the US government has responded to 9/11. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/topsecretamerica/

It is an impressive and scary study.

The Way is arrived at by enlightenment. The first priority is to establish resolve-it is no small matter to step directly from the bondage of the ordinary person into transcendent experience of the realm of sages. It requires that your mind be firm as steel to cut off the flow of birth and death, accept your original real nature, not see anything at all as existing inside or outside yourself, so all actions and endeavors emerge from the fundamental.
- Yuan wu (1063-1135)

It is a different America.

Hard to recognize it.

Fear is looking forward.

Disappointment, backward.

It's that kind of night.

Do away with your
Throat and lips,
And let me hear
What you can say.
- Shih-tou (700-790)

Nope!

The film about Mike Judge, Saint of 9/11, was made in 2006. I watched it today. The Franciscan friar, AA member, chaplain to the fire department, resource to AIDS sufferers, homeless street people's friend, gay celibate, kind and good man, the first listed casualty of 9/11.

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)

Traditional simple piety in complicated times.

Today, it seems, the root faith of Catholic Christianity goes through re-translation and reconfiguration until the concepts of early times bear some resemblance to contemporary thinking.

Or, are we still trying to imagine how elements of matter and nature are able by attentive word and recollection to become what they originally are -- the very stuff, material and spiritual, of that which we call God, Christ, Holy Spirit -- the inspiration of Oneness and Truth into Being experienced as Love?

Religious mystical reality is not for the faint-hearted, the frightened, the subservient. Rather, it is the feeling soul of innocence seen through degraded experience that longs for the wholeness it knows to be its true self. In other words, it is life keeping on with itself, moving through every experience, until it sees nothing else but the luminous very instant within which it stands completely on its own while completely embraced by a Love that cannot be grasped or explained.

Let go of your worries
and be completely clear-hearted,
like the face of a mirror
that contains no images.
If you want a clear mirror,
behold yourself
and see the shameless truth,
which the mirror reflects.
If metal can be polished
to a mirror-like finish,
what polishing might the mirror
of the heart require?
Between the mirror and the heart
is this single difference:
the heart conceals secrets,
while the mirror does not.
(--Rumi, The Divani Shamsi Tabriz, XIII)

In 1945 Isidore O'Brien wrote the book Mirror of Christ: St. Francis of Assisi.

I'm sure Mychal Judge read it.

I did.

And will again.

It's work, sorting.

It is difficult to sort truth from lie. We proffer the one to provoke the other. The thought occurs: It might not matter any longer whether is it truth or lie you think you are offering.

What we think might not matter. That thought alone seems a little much.

Yuan wu's remedy seems too much:

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)

Those who suggest to just become aware, then do the next thing there to do, offer a stark suggestion. But, aware of what?

ANY TIME

How long ago the day is
when at last I look at it
with the time it has taken
to be there still in it
now in the transparent light
with the flight in the voices
the beginning in the leaves
everything I remember
and before it before me
present at the speed of light
in the distance that I am
who keep reaching out to it
seeing all the time faster
where it has never stirred from
before there is anything
the darkness thinking the light
(Poem by W.S. Merwin)

We leave some place expecting to return. We follow a thought to tiredness of mind, then let it fall to the side. Something we cannot follow carrying baggage beckons us onward.

Thomas Merton wrote the following words on October 15, 1968 aboard a plane bound for Asia:

Joy. We left the ground--I with Christian mantras and a great sense of destiny, of being at last on my true way after years of waiting and wondering and fooling around. ... May I not come back without having settled the great affair. And found also the great compassion, mahakaruna… I am going home, to the home where I have never been in this body. (Asian Journal, pages 4-5).

He did not come back, at least not in the body he left with -- he died in Bangkok on Dec. 10.
The home "where I have never been in this body" might have been Asia, or, it could be wherever he is without his body (to so allude).

More Merton:

“If nothing that can be seen can either be God or represent Him to us as He is, then to find God we must pass beyond everything that can be seen and enter into darkness. Since nothing that can be heard is God, to find Him we must enter into silence.” (Thomas Merton in Seeds of Contemplation, p. 131)

“It is in deep solitude and silence that I find the gentleness with which I can truly love my brother and sister.” (Thomas Merton)

These days are solitary. So much of the outside -- politics, economy, business, media, opinion, processes of expression, and religious belief -- seems ubiquitous and uninteresting.

Finally, Merton:

Everything I think or do enters into the construction of a mandala. It is the balancing of experience over the void, not the censorship of experience. And no duality of experience—void. Experience is full because it is inexhaustible void. It is not mine. It is “uninterrupted exchange”. It is dance . . . . Word. Utterance and return. “Myself”. No-self. The self is merely a locus in which the dance of the universe is aware of itself as complete from beginning to end—and returning to the void. Gladly. Praising, giving thanks, with all beings. Christ light—spirit—grace—gift. (Bodhicitta). (p.68, Thomas Merton, The Asian Journal, New York: New Directions, 1973)

Raimon Panikkar builds on this:

Contemplation does not seek to understand rationally, nor is it an act of the imagination or a product of fantasy; it does not ignore or despise the life of matter, of the senses and of reason (for it is based on them), but transcends them; it is actual participation in the reality one contemplates, real sharing in the things one “sees,” dynamic identification with the truth one realizes. Contemplation is [thus] not merely an act of mind, but is “touch,” real existential contact, to use a metaphor not only precious to Plotinus in the Western tradition but also to the early Tamil bhakti poet-saints of South India. Contemplation, to further trace this line of thought, implies an “eating” of the object and also a “being eaten;” it discloses the absolute mutual transparency of subject and object. Seen another way, contemplation is the actual building of the temple of reality, wherein the onlooker is equally part and parcel of the whole construction. This may be the reason why “concentration,” i.e., the ontic crystallization of what is, the condensation of reality in the self above and beyond the mere psychological state, is in all traditions one of the most important features of the contemplative mood. It is a vision of totality through the discovery of the center within: as above, so below, as the ancient hermetic formula put it. Nothing is then more obvious than that contemplation does not exclusively depend on the will of Man or the “nature of things.” It requires a higher harmony as an integrating force. Contemplation is an ontological phenomenon.
(pp.27, 28, Raimon Panikkar, Invisible Harmony: Essays on Contemplation and Responsibility, Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1995)

I'm ready to be spat out, or, digested.

It is that kind of Labor Day!

Sorting.

What sort of oneness is it we contemplate?

Everybody is called to wholeness.

These days, the call is out over the northern skies.

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)

I'm not interested in joining the visionaries pointing to the end of the world as we know it.

Still, something is changing.

Even Jay has taken on O2, successor to Oscar the Dog.

The night sea journey will give way to a dawn without darkness.

At morning practice, Thich Nhat Hanh's words: "Sister Chan Khong then began to sing a verse that is drawn directly from a sutra written by the Buddha. The words go like this:"

This body is not me, I am not caught in this body.
I am life without boundaries. I have never been born,
and I shall never die.
Look at the ocean and the sky filled with stars,
manifestations of my wondrous true mind.
Since before time, I have been free.
Birth and death are only doors through which we
pass, sacred thresholds on the journey.
Birth and death are just a game of hide and seek.
So laugh with me,
hold my hand,
let us say goodbye,
say goodbye, to meet again soon.
We meet today.
We will meet tomorrow
We will meet at the source at every moment.
We meet each other in all forms of of life.

(p.124, in You Are Here, by Thich Nhat Hanh)

In an editorial published Saturday 3 September 2011 on http://www.nationofchange.org/years-911-lost-decade-1315059429 entitled "The Years Since 9/11: The Lost Decade," I contemplate posting a comment, but don't. This is what I write but don't post:

And, dare we forget, the terrible victory of those who perpetrated the attacks. There was a large-scale undermining of the confidence of Americans in their government, and a huge destruction of trust in the people by the government. Just because some leaders of Al Qaeda were assassinated does not diminish their shocking revelation of our irrational response of violence and ineffectual vision of diplomatic or heartfelt resolution by peaceful skills as witnessed in mercenary warfare and mindless spending on armaments, killing, and security. That revelation, short-circuiting our eroded compassion and care for the plight of the less-fortunate, has pointed out the raw aggression of military ambition and political take-no-prisoners mentality. Our leaders are afraid to be unafraid and thus prey on the fears of the citizenry to perpetually think, act, and vote with fear and cynicism. I would prefer not to suspect that the so-called enemy has become our constant self-identity.

Why say something, I reason, just because you think you have something to say?

Ask the dog:

Golden Retrievals

Fetch? Balls and sticks capture my attention
seconds at a time. Catch? I don’t think so.
Bunny, tumbling leaf, a squirrel who’s—oh
joy—actually scared. Sniff the wind, then

I’m off again: muck, pond, ditch, residue
of any thrillingly dead thing. And you?
Either you’re sunk in the past, half our walk,
thinking of what you never can bring back,

or else you’re off in some fog concerning
—tomorrow, is that what you call it? My work:
to unsnare time’s warp (and woof!), retrieving,
my haze-headed friend, you. This shining bark,

a Zen master’s bronzy gong, calls you here,
entirely, now: bow-wow, bow-wow, bow-wow.

(Poem by Mark Doty, “Golden Retrievals” from Sweet Machine: Poems. 1998 )

Who is unafraid? Not sunk in the past, or in some fog of...tomorrow?

I'm torn between simple acceptance of the absurdity of this existence as experienced in the world, and the possibility that some other world, perhaps one not 'in' the world -- but the world itself no longer determined, conditioned, or puppeteered by external forces, a world no longer dualized by interior fear, perhaps this possibility is what those who speak of 'spiritual life' mean.

Sometimes not-to-move is the best place to go.

Thirty years ago this week Maine moved me into it.

And there he remained.

In prison conversation turns to what seems impossible there, namely, trust. And we wonder -- is is possible to practice trust without calculating whether some other person was trustworthy to receive trust?

Half my life sitting by rocks and fountains, My study cold, seldom the steam of tea: White clouds emerge from the stillness, In the valley stream the water runs clear. I had no good karma to begin with, So I was born into this muddy age. Yet I know there's some past blessing, For I've escaped the layman's life, Shut my gate among clouds. Alms bowl in hand, I roam the village streets; Grasping my staff, I climb the wooded peaks. Sometimes I drift in the moonlight by Uji Bridge, An empty boat free to follow the purls and eddies. I never go against what the mind desires; All this time I've been spared of the din of the capital. - Gensei (1623-1668)

Here's what I think : trust is it's own. Any act of trust is, in itself, subject and object.

Even more -- any act of trust has no subject nor any object.

It is, in itself, enough. We decide trust is a hard shell nut nearly impossible to crack.

Never go against what the mind desires.

Mind desires trust.

Rokie, the Border Collie, back from visiting his cousin Cody, the German Shepherd, is a stick chasing crazyhead up the path, over felled tree, to overgrown hilly pasture of Ragged Mountain.

Morning sitting in cabin is silent. Walk is silent. Even with all the sounds of Hummingbird, cricket, Raven, Chickadee, Finch and Sparrow -- even with cars passing on Barnestown Rd heading elsewhere -- everything is silent.

From this time many of his disciples turned back and no longer followed him.
“You do not want to leave too, do you?” Jesus asked the Twelve.
Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. We believe and know that you are the Holy One of God.”

(--from John 6:56ff)

Sitting still, merely listening. Walking woods, merely looking.

In class last night we wondered about the circumincessional interpenetration found in E.E.Cummings poem.

the great advantage of being alive

the great advantage of being alive
(instead of undying) is not so much
that mind no more can disprove than prove
what heart may feel and soul may touch
--the great(my darling)happens to be
that love are in we,that love are in we

and here is a secret they never will share
for whom create is less than have
or one times one than when times where--
that we are in love,that we are in love:
with us they've nothing times nothing to do
(for love are in we am in i are in you)

this world(as timorous itsters all
to call their cowardice quite agree)
shall never discover our touch and feel
--for love are in we are in love are in we;
for you are and i am and we are(above
and under all possible worlds)in love

a billion brains may coax undeath
from fancied fact and spaceful time--
no heart can leap,no soul can breathe
but by the sizeless truth of a dream
whose sleep is the sky and the earth and the sea.
For love are in you am in i are in we

(--poem by e. e. cummings)

Something new and deeply interested is invited by this poem.

A new and different way of seeing.

In my calendar today, 1Sept, is new year's day.

Entering the silence.

(for love are in we am in i are in you)

Who's where what is here?

Caroline Myss spoke the sentence: "No wonder we fear truth."

Without wonder, truth is enemy. With humility, in the midst of humiliation, we are graced. That truth is hard to love. Hence, fear.

The six supernormal faculties of the enlightened
Are the ability to enter the realm of form without
Being confused by form, to enter the realm of sound
Without being confused by sound,
To enter the realm of scent without being confused
By scent, to enter the realm of flavor without being
Confused by flavor, to enter the realm of feeling
Without being confused by feeling, to enter the realm
Of phenomena without being confused by phenomena.
- Linji (d. 867) from DailyZen

Is that what oneness asks? Just to be it and there and nowhere to be found?

No wonder we say, "I'll take two!" so often.

This I seek. This I long for.

One thing I ask from the LORD,
this only do I seek:
that I may dwell in the house of the LORD
all the days of my life,
to gaze on the beauty of the LORD
and to seek him in his temple.
--Psalm 27

This is what I am.

In the silence of the word.

In the wording, absurdly, of silence.

Some claim we are becoming zombiesque.

The term is often figuratively applied to describe a hypnotized person bereft of consciousness and self-awareness, yet ambulant and able to respond to surrounding stimuli.
-- Wikipedia on 'zombie'

So much of what takes place as democracy and representative government is corporate marketing and financial sector public relations. There's a need for resurrected transformation of what we like to call the American Character. We're against manipulation, slavery, intolerance, and inequality. This message will unsettle the current powers that run this country. It's time for the change.

All conventional forms of dissent, from electoral politics to open debates, have been denied us. We cannot rely on the institutions that once made piecemeal and incremental reform possible. The only route left is to disconnect as thoroughly as possible from the consumer society and engage in acts of civil disobedience and obstruction. The more we sever ourselves from the addictions of fossil fuel and the consumer society, the more we begin to create a new paradigm for community. The more we engage in physical acts of defiance—as Bill McKibben and others did recently in front of the White House to protest the building of the Keystone XL pipeline, which would increase the flow of “dirty” tar sands oil from Alberta, Canada, to refineries on the Gulf of Mexico—the more we can keep alive a new, better way of relating to each other and the ecosystem.

Most important, we must stop being afraid. We have to turn our backs for good on the Democrats, no matter what ghoulish candidate the Republicans offer up for president. We have to defy all formal systems of power. We have to listen closely to the moral voices in our society, from McKibben to Noam Chomsky to Wendell Berry to Ralph Nader, and ignore feckless liberals who have been one of the most effective tools of our disempowerment. We have to create monastic enclaves where we can retain and nurture the values being rapidly destroyed by the wider corporate culture and build the mechanisms of self-sufficiency that will allow us to survive. The corporate coup is over. We have lost. The trolls have won. We have to face our banishment.
-- from article by Chris Hedges, The Election March of the Trolls, August 29, 2011, published on Truthdig website
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_election_march_of_the_trolls_20110829/

The thing about coups is they tend to devour their own.

I'd prefer a more reasonable replacement of the few that have usurped power.

Not a revolution, but a more considered non-violent revolving door that lets out those who've destroyed the good will and lofty hopes of a disappointed populace.

A simplistic religious-right fascism will not, ultimately, please Americans. Listen up, political preacher candidates!

No, tomorrow we start dismantling hypocrisy and posturing.

Real kindness knows not bullshit. No more zombies! No more rote media transcriptions of zombie drivel.

Is there anyone left who remembers kindness, true words-into-actions, who will refuse bullshit?

Let's tell them that need telling what needs to be told!

It's nearly too late!

Maybe it's all about paying attention to each other.

Clouds
Spread like canopies, trailing like sashes,
Changing shape in the sky's midst,
Showing no trace of dust,
Off to the south, in from the north,
Nowhere ever lingering.
Ten thousand miles of heaven and earth
All your neighbors.
- Gensei (1623-1668)

Trying to be of help. Tidying up. Mourning the dead.

Being grateful.

Just that we are alive.

And those not, were once.

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.