Coming to: ad venire; 19

When is an inch on a yardstick not an inch?

It's a good koan. Compliments of Willow.

The mountain's head is white
And mine is too
December dies, the year
Runs out its string as all things do
- Yuan Mei (1716-1798)

Half December.

Is there a death that can be called half-death?

I arrive in silence to this meditation place. Dog sleeps on white couch. Nothing moves. Letters appear. Thinking gives way to gaze.

One student, Zach, at last night's final class held at hermitage, wondered what the man would do who'd escaped the shadowy darkness of the Plato's Cave analogy rather than try to convince those still blinded to real light that there was more than they'd accepted in their darkness.

Robert Lowell's line came to mind: "All's misalliance. / Yet why not say what happened?" ((From poem, "Epilogue.")

Just saying.

No need to hammer and nail, measure or cut, design or build.

Only say what happened with no craving for anything other than the saying.

Here's how Lowell surrounds that line:

Epilogue

Those blessèd structures, plot and rhyme--
why are they no help to me now
I want to make
something imagined, not recalled?
I hear the noise of my own voice:
The painter's vision is not a lens,
it trembles to caress the light.
But sometimes everything I write
with the threadbare art of my eye
seems a snapshot,
lurid, rapid, garish, grouped,
heightened from life,
yet paralyzed by fact.
All's misalliance.
Yet why not say what happened?
Pray for the grace of accuracy
Vermeer gave to the sun's illumination
stealing like the tide across a map
to his girl solid with yearning.
We are poor passing facts,
warned by that to give
each figure in the photograph
his living name.
(Poem, Epilogue, by Robert Lowell)

Give a poet an inch, he'll imagine us a new way to see the world.

And all views from our yard!

Coming to: ad venire; 18

Different. Everything feels different. "Differre," (Latin), to carry away. Something about mortality.

On a more intimate note, he recalls interactions with his teacher, the late Seung Sahn (known to his students as Soen Sa Nim), with obvious admiration and a discernible sense of the teacher’s presence. Our discussion of Buddhism and not-Buddhism reminds him of his teacher pushing him into being a teacher. “I said to him,” he recalls, “‘Soen Sa Nim, I’m here to learn how to practice from you. I’m not interested in being a teacher; I want to be the student.’ And he said ‘If you are my student, then this is how you will learn to be a student, as you teach.’ And I said, ‘But I don’t know anything. I don’t know what to do. I wouldn’t know what to talk about.’ And he said, ‘Aawwwwww,’ as if he really deeply understood what my issue was, ‘no problem, you only talk about area you understand. Don’t talk about area you don’t understand.’” (- about Jon Kabat Zinn)
http://www.shambhalasun.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1296&Itemid=0

The Buddha said: "For one who takes nothing whatsoever as I or me or mine, such a one is free from the snares of the king of death."

Now, there's a practice!

That's what we heard at practice last evening.

Even the man knocked down and out by his cow in Antigonish Nova Scotia was there to hear those words. Back from subdural hematoma and months of mindful breathing in and out of consciousness.

Welcome, again, to Meetingbrook, David!

For both the words and the 87 year old's return to visit, we are grateful!

Coming to: ad venire; 17

Lucy, Lucia, light through blindness. Quite a metaphor!

AH, RIDI DOTTORE

Everything
Begins
To fail

It's what
Beginnings 
Do

Now, endings
Are
Different

Take Pagliacci 

When 
"La commedia 
è finita!"

All we can
Do is
Go home

(wfh/13dec11)

A Tibetan teacher is giving opening remarks at a retreat and a snippet of the video catches my attention. He says that we are here, "taking time out of our lives..." -- and that's all I need to hear. Is that what we are being called to do? Take 'time' out of our life? Is that what 'home' is? Is home timelessness, dwelling in the eternal and infinite now, with nothing, nowhere else, and fully within the realization of What-Is-Wholly-Itself?

And this, right in the middle of what we call 'world?' In the midst of everything that presents itself? Seeing light through and beyond forms?

If you tell me it is all a story, a metaphor, that we are in a mind weaving endless tales of subterfuge and irony, deceit and heartbreak, all for the dramaturgy of divine realization, apogee and denouement revealing what our eyes, fraught with facts and fantasies, cannot penetrate; we are stunned by all final scenes pointing out paradoxical obverse, that we are of a piece with what has never broken off, with the Holy Itself, God, Father/Mother, Being, Truth, Love -- and have never, really, been anywhere else -- then I will have to continue looking at you, long and full of frowning wonder, while around us stage is struck, costumes folded, solitary lamp stand placed at empty center of proscenium where vacant seats rise to open doors and out into what Lucia sees.

But that is to come.

As we.

Come to.

This.

Lesson 347

Anger must come from judgment. Judgment is
The weapon I would use against myself,
To keep the miracle away from me.

Father[/Mother], I want what goes against my will, and do not want what is my will to have. Straighten my mind, my [Mother/]Father. It is sick. But You have offered freedom, and I choose to claim Your gift today. And so I give all judgment to the One You gave to me to judge for me. He sees what I behold, and yet He knows the truth. He looks on pain, and yet He understands it is not real, and in His understanding it is healed. He gives the miracles my dreams would hide from my awareness. Let Him judge today. I do not know my will, but He is sure it is Your Own. And He will speak for me, and call Your miracles to come to me.
Listen today. Be very still, and hear the gentle Voice for God assuring you that He has judged you as the Son[/Daughter] He loves.

I am listening.

Still.

Coming to: ad venire; 16

Francis Poulenc Gloria performed by Down East Singers at Camden Opera House yesterday afternoon. I choose it over philosophy lecture at library. Anthony Antolini conducts, Soprano Christina Astrachan solos, and instrumentalist group, Ti' Acadie added vim and vigor. Soloist drew us into realization of text. I translate: "as sin is taken away, we are none other than mercy itself," or:

(miserere nobis; qui tollis peccata mundi, suscipe deprecationem nostram. Qui sedes ad dexteram Patris, miserere nobis.
Have mercy on us; You who take away the sins of the world, hear our prayers. Who sits at the right hand of the Father, have mercy upon us.)

None, other than? Or, none other than? Mercy itself awaits simultaneous translation.

Something about being drawn in, "being" drawn in, brings tears through music. This balcony of eremitic gratitude!

Where He Found Himself

The new man unfolded a map and pointed
to a dark spot on it. “See, that’s how
far away I feel all the time, right here,
among all of you,” he said.
.         .”Yes,” John the gentle mule replied,
“alienation is clearly your happiness.”
But the group leader interrupted,
“Now, now, let’s hear him out,
let’s try to be fair.”  The new man felt
the familiar comfort of everyone against him.
.                                   .He went on about the stupidities
of love, life itself as one long foreclosure,
until another man said, “I was a hog,
a terrible hog, and now I’m a llama.”
To which another added, “And me, I was a wolf.
Now children walk up to me, unafraid.”
.             .The group leader asked the new man,
“What kind of animal have you been?”
“A rat that wants to remain a rat,” he said,
and the group began to soften
as they remembered their own early days,
the pain before the transformation.

(Poem by Stephen Dunn)

It is 3AM. New intimate deck outside dining room slider is awash in moonlight. I step out barefoot to stand under the surrounding sanctuary of star and planet, empty space and unseen truth -- invitatory of cosmos chanting creation, transcendence transforming prayer into silent interiority, a suffusing simplicity.

At performance end Sunday afternoon Saskia steps into reception room as I walk to harbor to check dark brown linseed/pinetar'd Matinicus Peapod nestled between Manning's dark green dory and Lewis' dark blue sailing pod. Calmly tethered to floats where "Prophet" is at rest alongside three lobster boats inboard of shrinkwrapped schooners down from Landing. A glorious December twilight, lighted fir tree atop "Mary Day" mainmast, lighted star tops turret on Mount Battie up and away. French and Latin lyrics from concert as well as Acadian rhythms are settling into low tide sway of float where I balance softening to the passing flow...

Q: What kind of person is a Ch'an master?

Tao-shin replied: Someone who is not disturbed either by chaos or serenity is a person with the know how of good Ch'an practice. When one always dwells in tranquility, the mind perishes. But if you are always in a state of discernment, then the mind scatters chaotically. The Lotus Sutra says: "The Buddha himself dwells in the Great Vehicle. The power of meditation and of wisdom gives remarkable splendour to the dharmas which he has acquired. These he uses to save all beings."
- Tao-shin (580-651)

I don't mind forgetting. More and more disappears. Only what is right in front of me makes any sense. (And not much at that!)
For this I am grateful. It seems a new template arises subsuming everything 'else' into it. I do not know how this is done. I've lost whatever itinerary I thought I had. I'm just a tourist. Sightseer. Looking around.

Lesson 346

Today the peace of God envelops me,
And I forget all things except His Love
Father, I wake today with miracles correcting my perception of all things. And so begins the day I share with You as I will share eternity, for time has stepped aside today. I do not seek the things of time, and so I will not look upon them. What I seek today transcends all laws of time and things perceived in time. I would forget all things except Your Love. I would abide in You, and know no laws except Your law of love. And I would find the peace which You created for Your Son, forgetting all the foolish toys I made as I behold Your glory and my own.
And when the evening comes today, we will remember nothing but the peace of God. For we will learn today what peace is ours, when we forget all things except God's Love.
(ACIM)

It is like a new map unfolding a man.

There is no destination.

Nor any distance between here and here.

Coming to: ad venire; 15

I've been watching Bald Mountain much of the morning.

It remains as it is.

Goes nowhere.

CHICKADEE

I am so
Glad

I am not
Something else

For this instance...
A poem
(-wfh)

There it is.

All.

By itself!

Coming to: ad venire;14

We renew promises this feast of Thomas Merton at morning practice in the Thomas Merton Bookshed Retreat.

  Another contrast with Augustine is his sense of humour. No-one can be all bad who says of Michelangelo’s Moses that “I’m glad the thing couldn’t speak, for it would probably have given out some very heavy statements”; or of Platonic philosophy that “there is a considerable difference between Plato and Plotinus, but I am not enough of a philosopher to know what it is. Thank God I shall never again have to try and find out, either.” Even when he performs some meritorious action, he scrupulously points out his mixed motives. Here he is on the way to hospital to be treated for appendicitis:
  ‘In the Fourteenth Street subway there was a drunk. And he was really drunk. He was lying prostrate in the middle of the turnstiles, in everybody’s way. Several people pushed him and told him to get up and get out of there, but he could not even get himself up on his feet.
  ‘I thought to myself: “If I try to lift him out of there, my appendix will burst, and I too will be lying there in the turnstiles along with him.” With my nervousness tempered by a nice warm feeling of smugness and self-complacency, I took the drunk by the shoulders and laboriously hauled him backwards out of the turnstiles and propped him up against the wall. He groaned feebly in protest.
  ‘Then, mentally congratulating myself for my great solicitude and charity towards drunks, I entered the turnstile and went down to take the train to the hospital. As I looked back, over my shoulder, from the bottom of the stairs, I could see the drunk slowly and painfully crawling back towards the turnstile, where he once again flung himself down, prostrate, across the opening, and blocked the passage as he had done before.’
  Thus he skillfully deflates the whole drama and convinces the reader that the act was at once infinitely unimportant and infinitely worth doing. This is, of course, true of everything we do; but the truth is easier to assimilate when you see it in action. http://www.universalis.com/-500/today.htm

Back in Wohnkuche we retell stories about our foolishness over the years -- the farms and properties we thought might be meetingbrook, the visit to the Bishop we thought might be a new form of religious life, the pleasant fiasco of meetingbrook in the marketplace we thought would keep us solvent. Mostly we reminisce about the lovely odd and wonderfully off-center folks passing through meetingbrook -- and still do.

“What is it not to sin? Do not ask much; go, the silent flowers will tell you.” (Angelus Silesia né Johannes Scheffler (1624-1677) )

Folly is the unwritten history of meetingbrook.

Foolishness
For other uses, see Foolish and Fool.
Foolishness is the lack of wisdom. In this sense it differs from stupidity, which is the lack of intelligence.[citation needed] An act of foolishness is sometimes referred to as a folly.

Foolishness and wisdom are contrasted in Paul's letter to the Corinthians. He condemns intellectual arrogance and advocates a humble attitude of foolishness in which it is then possible to learn. Plato likewise said, "He is the wisest man who knows himself to be ill-equipped for the study of wisdom" but Paul makes a distinction between wisdom and the reason of the Greeks.[1][2] (Wikipedia)

Still, we recite our promises, affirm we wish to continue them, then Saskia does bell chant, a lovely listening to the unabashed sound of brass bowl saying what it and inviter converse.

Three promises:

Contemplation, Conversation, Correspondence.
...as held by Meetingbrook Dogen & Francis Hermitage“m.o.n.o.”(monastics of no other).

Contemplation is the promise of simplicity.
It is a gift of poverty inviting open waiting, receptive trust, attention, and watchful presence. It is a simple Being-With.
It is attentive presence.

Conversation is the promise of integrity.
It is a chaste and complete intention to listen and speak, lovingly and respectfully, with each and all made present to us. It is a wholeness of listening and speaking.
It is root silence.

Correspondence is the promise of faithful engagement.
It is responsible attention and intention offered obediently to the Source of all Being, to the Human Family, to Nature. It is a faithful engagement with all sentient beings, with this present world, with existence with all its needs & joys, sorrows & hope.
It is transparent service.

…………………………………………………………………

Meetingbrook Dogen & Francis Hermitage invites & welcomes individuals interested in the practice of these 3 promises in their life. Whether the interest is in conversing, praying, deepening, learning, or even holding these 3 promises, we invite you to enter the inquiry and stillness. May the loving light and the compassionate peace of the Christ and the Bodhisattva accompany and support the efforts of each one.

………………………………………………………………..

Quotes: 

1. We are going to have to create a new language of prayer. (Thomas Merton, Calcutta 1968)

2. When you go apart to be alone for prayer…see that nothing remains in your consciousness mind save a naked intent stretching out toward God. Leave it stripped of every particular idea about God (what he is like in himself or in his works) and keep only the awareness that he is as he is. Let him be thus, I pray you, and force him not to be otherwise. (Anonymous)

3. I long for a great lake of ale. / I long for the men of heaven in my house. / I long for cheerfulness in their drinking. / And I long for Jesus to be there among them. (Brigid, Celtic saint)

4. It is not by closing your eyes that you see your own nature. On the contrary, you must open your eyes wide and wake up to the real situation in the world to see completely your whole Dharma Treasure, your whole Dharma Body. The bombs, the hunger, the pursuit of wealth and power - these are not separate from your nature….You will suffer, but your pain will not come from your own worries and fears. You will suffer because of your kinship with all beings, because you have the compassion of an awakened one, a Bodhisattva. (Thich Nhat Hanh)

5. He who truly attains awakening knows that deliverance is to be found right where he is. There is no need to retire to the mountain cave. If he is a fisherman he becomes a real fisherman. If he is a butcher he becomes a real butcher. The farmer becomes a real farmer and the merchant a real merchant. He lives his daily life in awakened awareness. His every act from morning to night is his religion. (Sokei-an)

Videbimus!

Latin
Verb
vidēbimus
first-person plural future active indicative of videō
"we shall see, we shall perceive; we shall look (at)"
"we shall observe, we shall note"
"we shall understand, we shall perceive, we shall comprehend"
"we shall look (at), we shall consider, we shall reflect (upon)"
"we shall look out for, we shall see to, we shall care for, we shall provide, we shall make sure" (-from Wiktionary)

Prosit!

Coming to: ad venire; 13

In text during Thursday Evening Conversation the phrase "as it is" was read.

Lesson 342
I let forgiveness rest upon all things,
For thus forgiveness will be given me.

I thank You, Father, for Your plan to save me from the hell I made. It is not real. And You have given me the means to prove its unreality to me. The key is in my hand, and I have reached the door beyond which lies the end of dreams. I stand before the gate of Heaven, wondering if I should enter in and be at home. Let me not wait again today. Let me forgive all things, and let creation be as You would have it be and as it is. Let me remember that I am Your Son, and opening the door at last, forget illusions in the blazing light of truth, as memory of You returns to me.

Brother, forgive me now. I come to you to take you home with me. And as we go, the world goes with us on our way to God.
(ACIM lesson 8dec2011)

Is occurred to me it would make a good name for a dog, "as it is," or, Asitis.

Another phrase, "as we go" arises in final sentence, wishing to transform into a name. Hence, "Aswego."

This morning it occurs further that it is a good name for God: Asitis Aswego.

My friends in AA might connect with this neologism/neonate and happily smile at meeting the new arrival.

Through that smile of recognition we hear soft voice saying: "I come to you to take you home with me."

And we are taken with it.

Closer to our time, there is John Lennon, who in 1980 passed through our sight and disappeared.

IMAGINE

Imagine there's no heaven
It's easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today...

Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace...

You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will be as one

Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world...

You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will live as one

(Lyrics by John Lennon)

Be as one; live as one.

Good words!

What did Buddha see? What breath did he take?

Also this 8th of December, along with the clear transmission of light through her mother into Mary, on this date:

Sakyamuni's Great Awakening

Traditions vary on what happened. Some say he made a great vow to nirvana and Earth to find the root of suffering, or die trying. In other traditions, while meditating he was harassed and tempted by the god Mara (literally, "Destroyer" in Sanskrit), demon of illusion.[3][4] Other traditions simply state that he entered deeper and deeper states of meditation, confronting the nature of the self.
In the Pali Canon, there are several discourses said to be by Buddha himself, relating to this story. In The Longer Discourse to Saccaka (MN 36),[5] the Buddha describes his Enlightenment in three stages:
During the first watch of the night, the Buddha discovered all of his past lives in the cycle of rebirth, realizing that he had been born and reborn countless times before.
During the second watch, the Buddha discovered the Law of Karma, and the importance of living by the Eightfold Path.
During the third watch, the Buddha discovered the Four Noble Truths, finally reaching Nirvana.
In his words:
“ My heart, thus knowing, thus seeing, was released from the fermentation of sensuality, released from the fermentation of becoming, released from the fermentation of ignorance. With release, there was the knowledge, 'Released.' I discerned that 'Birth is ended, the holy life fulfilled, the task done. There is nothing further for this world.'[5] ”

All traditions agree that as the morning star rose in the sky in the early morning,[6] the third watch of the night, Siddhartha finally found the answers he sought and became Enlightened, and experienced Nirvana.[6] Having done so, Siddhartha now became a Buddha or "Awakened One".[6][3]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bodhi_Day

I'll breathe well knowing what Buddha saw.

Bodhi Day -- or Rohatsu, as it's known in Japan -- is the day the Buddha awakens. It's the day he finds enlightenment, sitting under the pipul tree.
A dear friend asked me the question I'm usually asking: so what? What does Bodhi Day mean? Disclaimer here: I'm not a worshipping kind of Buddhist. I don't believe the Buddha was a god, nor even divine. The whole point to Buddhism is that a human being did this -- achieved enlightenment. And that the rest of us -- because he elected to teach -- can also choose that path.
So here's what I believe, and why Bodhi Day is important:
I believe in little enlightenments -- like the day I realised that all the people and beings and plants and seas and fallen stars still live. In our breaths. That as we breathe out, we breathe our own cells into the air. And as we breathe in, we breathe in dinosaurs and comets and poets and bees and Frederick Douglass and Christopher Marlowe and Rumi and wars and loss and love and all that makes up our amazing world. And this connects us. To each other ~ in a kind of web that extends in all directions. Forever.
(from, Bodhi Day, Rohatsu, or Waking Up; Beliefnet; a personal insight into Rohatsu. BY: Britton Gildersleeve
Read more: http://www.beliefnet.com/Inspiration/Articles/Bodhi-Day-Rohatsu-or-Waking-Up.aspx#ixzz1fxA8srZi

Exhale well today!

Coming to: ad venire; 12

Drops drip from ceiling onto chest as I sleep. My chest. Wind groans through large cedars at north edge of house. 4:15am and all is 8Dec. This is the feast celebration of life passing through solid obstacles to reveal itself as nothing other than life-itself-through-itself, or, as some call it, Immaculate Conception.

Mary, the story has it, experienced mu-ge, no-barrier, during her arrival in form. The childhood prayer was: "O Mary, conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee."

A zen koan prayer might be phrased: How does no-barrier allow no-other to appear with nothing present?

(Pause for effect.) Then response: Rain on sleeping man passes through dream without drenching one image!

Hello, Mary! Hello, all that is passing through! Today is your moveable feast!

And what a feast!

Last night I say to students not to fear the word "nothing."

Peonies

This morning the green fists of the peonies are getting ready
to break my heart
as the sun rises,
as the sun strokes them with his old, buttery fingers

and they open--
pools of lace,
white and pink--
and all day the black ants climb over them,

boring their deep and mysterious holes
into the curls,
craving the sweet sap,
taking it away

to their dark, underground cities--
and all day
under the shifty wind,
as in a dance to the great wedding,

the flowers bend their bright bodies,
and tip their fragrance to the air,
and rise,
their red stems holding

all that dampness and recklessness
gladly and lightly,
and there it is again--
beauty the brave, the exemplary,

blazing open.
Do you love this world?
Do you cherish your humble and silky life?
Do you adore the green grass, with its terror beneath?

Do you also hurry, half-dressed and barefoot, into the garden,
and softly,
and exclaiming of their dearness,
fill your arms with the white and pink flowers,

with their honeyed heaviness, their lush trembling,
their eagerness
to be wild and perfect for a moment, before they are
nothing, forever?
(Poem: "Peonies," by Mary Oliver, from New and Selected Poems, Beacon Press).

Fallingness is our given nature.

As so, nothing falls through each, and, all, falling together!

Coming to: ad venire; 11

Submission. To be sent under.

"God is not an object; God is the absolute Subject." (Henry Corbin, in The Man of Light in Iranian Sufism)

No predicate. No modifier. Verb implied and contained in Subject. No reference outside itself. Nothing outside itself.

Thrown under. ("Subject" 'sub'= under; 'jacere'= to throw). "Throw" - Origin: Middle English thrawen, throwen to cause to twist, throw, from Old English thrāwan to cause to twist or turn; akin to Old High German drāen to turn, Latin terere to rub, Greek tribein to rub, tetrainein to bore, pierce (Mirriam-Webster)

Teirein, Greek, to wear out. Is God, as absolute Subject, that which is wearing out, wearing out whatever thinks itself not-god; rubbing down, twisting and turning the mistaken perception or belief that there is 'other' that exists on its own, separate, even separate but equal, in relation to what-is-called-god? Is our phrase "Thrown under the bus" -- meaning colloquially to sacrifice or do away with, really a riddle phrased to be turned over and looked at again? To throw under the "bus" (when reversed) becomes "sub" or "under." Hence, to throw under the under.

Steiner (1978) offers a demarcation in that, a further aspect of Dasein, as argued by Heidegger, is that Dasein is grounded in language; Being-in-the-world expresses itself in discourse. Furthermore, he made a distinction between ‘Rede’, ‘the speech of Dasein’ and ‘Gerede’, ‘talk’. He avoided the triteness of using the term ‘idle chatter’ for ‘talk’ because it was far too reassuring for what he wanted to say. For Heidegger, ‘talk’ had lost its primary relationship-of-being toward the talked about entity and all that ‘talk’ was doing was to ‘pass words along’ or, to ‘gossip emptily’, fostering illusions of understanding that have no real comprehension. Dasein-with-others takes place in an echo chamber of nonstop bogus interaction, with no cognition as to what is being communicated (Steiner 1978).

The differences between authentic and inauthentic lives were contrasted by Heidegger through the agencies of fear set against anxiety, ‘speech’ contrasted with ‘talk’, genuine wonder opposed to mere novelty. Each disparate category comes about as an expected outcome of the complete antithesis between the self-possession of true Dasein and the collective lack of perception of an existence carried out in terms of ‘oneness’ and ‘theyness’. Heidegger denoted this latter state as ‘Verfall’ (‘a falling away from’ ‘a cadence into decline’). Heidegger was careful to point out that the condition of ‘Verfallensein’ (a fallen state) is not sinful, nor is the term meant to cast a moral value judgement.

Heidegger wrote;

“Dasein has, in the first instance, fallen away [abgefallen] from itself as an authentic potentiality for Being its self, and has fallen into the ‘world’. ‘Fallenness’ into the world means an absorption in Being-with-one-another, in so far as the latter is guided by idle talk, curiosity and ambiguity. Through the Interpretation of falling, what we have called the ‘inauthenticity’ of Dasein may now be defined more precisely. On no account however do the terms ‘inauthentic’ and ‘non-authentic’ signify ‘really not’, as if in this mode of Being, Dasein were altogether to lose its Being. ‘Inauthenticity’ does not mean anything like Being-no-longer-in-the-world, but amounts rather to quite a distinctive kind of Being-in-the-world – the kind which is completely fascinated by the ‘world’ and by the Dasein-with of Others in the ‘they’. Not-Being-its-self [Das Nicht-es-selbst-sein] functions as a positive possibility of that entity which, in its essential concern, is absorbed in a world. This kind of not-Being has to be conceived as that kind of Being which is closest to Dasein and in which Dasein maintains itself for the most part."

For Heidegger then, ‘inauthenticity’ and ‘fallenness’ are not mere mishaps or erroneous options. Rather they are essential components of existence, because Dasein is always Dasein-with and a Being-in-the-world into which we have been thrown. Acceding to the enticement of living a mundane existence is simply a part of existing itself. ‘Fallenness’ was a positive for Heidegger in the sense that there must be ‘inauthenticity’, ‘theyness’, and ‘talk’, for Dasein to become aware of its loss of self and strive for its return to authentic Being. ‘Verfall’ turns out to be the completely essential prerequisite towards the repossession of self, the struggle toward true Dasein (Steiner 1978).

Dasein is committed to searching out the authentic via the inauthenticity of its Being-in-the-world and Heidegger said that authentic existence is not something which floats above everyday fallingness. He postulated that a proper instrument is needed for seizing the everydayness and he said that that instrument is ‘care’ [Sorge]. Because in the condition of inauthenticity we ‘fall away from ourselves’, Heidegger said that we simultaneously fall into a frenetic busyness and an emptiness that gives rise to a sense of the uncanny. As we flap about feeling ‘homeless’ our everyday familiarity is shattered (Steiner 1978).

It is uncanniness that declares the pivotal moments in which Angst brings Dasein face to face with the terrible freedom of deciding whether to remain in inauthenticity or to endeavor to attain self-possession. ‘Sorge’ is the means of transcendence beyond being Dasein-with and Dasein-in to become Dasein-for and Sorge must be a ‘care for’ many things. These things include a concern for others, a care for the ready-to-hand, but in principle Sorge is a caring for the presentness and obscurity of Being itself (Steiner 1978). Heidegger said;

“When Dasein ‘understands’ uncanniness in the everyday manner, it does so by turning away from it in falling; in this turning away, the ‘not-at-home’ gets ‘dimmed down’. Yet the everydayness of this fleeing shows phenomenally that anxiety, as a basic state of mind, belongs to Dasein’s essential state of Being-in-the-world, which, as one that is existential, is never present-at-hand but is itself always in a mode of factical Being-there – that is, in the mode of a state of mind.”

For Heidegger, it is Sorge that signifies a mans existence and makes it meaningful. To be-in-the-world in an authentic existential pretext is to be ‘careful’. Heidegger concluded that ‘care’ is the primordial state of Being as Dasein strives towards authenticity (Steiner 1978).
(from, What Heidegger Means by Being-in-the-World, by Roy Hornsby, http://royby.com/philosophy/pages/dasein.html

Spirituality, or classical metaphysics,(Greek: τὰ μετὰ τὰ φυσικά), where being-qua-being is focus of attention, is not easy to understand. It is difficult to submit, to be sent under. We prefer to be on top of things, even over the top. To rise to the heights. To stand above, to lord over. To make it to the highest peak. This is perhaps why there is no taste for authentic spirituality in the marketplace of spiritual materialism. Even "One nation under God" fails to alert attention to what is proclaimed. "Indivisible with liberty" seems even more foreign.

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)

What is uncanny is that we care.

Even if we don't know what to do or what to say, we care.

Being thrown-into and fallen-away we are dwelling at the portal of submission where care, dare I say, compassion and love, long to emerge through our being-in-the-world with one another into an understanding distinct and indivisible, as simple as a bowl of rice, a religion of proximate awareness, a philosophy of unity with diversity.

I stopped the talk by Robert Kennedy SJ, Roshi as he was saying about awakening that it was "clarity of mind from beginning to end."

Tuesday Evening Practice in Merton Retreat had a time limit. And that's that.

Even if no beginning. Even if no end.

Clarity of mind.

Suffices.

Coming to: ad venire; 10

Rest well. Feel well.

That's what I say as I leave to the person I am visiting in the psychiatric unit. Two others arrived as I did. Thus I remained a silent fourth in an echoing room during fragments of an old ritual conversing around phantom fire pit comfortable with nothing to say. They could be visiting me.

The Mountains' Friend

The broad arms of this dusty world
Hold few true friends.
One feels the pangs of loneliness, and sees
How cold the autumn air becomes!
But no, behold your search is ended here,
For countless mountains,
Blue afar, and green ones near,
Remain your friends eternally.
- Jakushitsu Genko Zenji (1290–1368)

For a while it is difficult to determine who is the patient and who the visitors. This happens at prison also; who's the cop, the inmate, the staff, the visitor? Pericopes of memory arise and are given words. Thoughts enter without knocking. Side glances thrown without trace of irony. Subtle theater in long run, actors no longer cue lines, it is a random emergence of Ionesco and Beckett writing absurd cross-dialogue. Somewhere, having forgotten play in progress, director sips espresso looking out blinds behind window reflecting back images of medicated theories with no clock on wall.

IN THE GALLERY OF THE ORDINARY

In their excess, their blowsy dreaming
and King Solomon-like tempers, the clouds
possess the grandeur of eighteenth-century oils,

when a painter earned his profession
as an anatomist. Those artists of verdigris
and gamboge, too gorged on joy, perhaps,

treated that blank pasture of the “heavens”
like something that had lived.
Their crawly undoings remind us

of the mean curiosities of sheep, the sea’s
half-remembered boil, or a few twisted bolls
of cotton—the morning phosphorescent

or sunset a dull, worn-out gilt.
The nights there were scumbled with light.
How could we ever have taken them

for the abstinence of art?
(Poem by William Logan)

I am perfectly at home in the curious ordinary of displaced images. Those who look for order and odes will squirm amid the erratic and unrhymed arias of unprocessed poetry. The protocol placers are wealthy with set pieces while the riffraff pencil or scampish bamboo brush hardly recognize what dull-lead or stone-rubbed black ink leave as trace behind.

What I really want to say has to do with Sintaklaas.

Saint Nicholas

St. Nicholas "Lipensky" (1294 Russian icon)
Bishop of Myra, Defender of Orthodoxy, Wonderworker, Holy Hierarch
Born c. 270 AD (the Ides of March)[1]
Patara, Lycia, Asia Minor (modern-day Turkey)
Died 6 December 343 AD
Myra, Lycia
Honored in Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, Oriental Orthodoxy, Anglicanism, Lutheranism
Canonized Pre-Congregation
Major shrine Basilica di San Nicola, Bari, Italy
Feast
6 December [O.S. 19 December](main feast day)
9 May [O.S. 22 May](translation of relics)
(The "O.S." dates are for the Julian Calendar used by most Eastern churches)[2]
Attributes Vested as a Bishop. In Eastern Christianity, wearing an omophorion and holding a Gospel Book. Sometimes shown with Jesus Christ over one shoulder, holding a Gospel Book, and with the Theotokos over the other shoulder, holding an omophorion
Patronage Children, sailors, fishermen, merchants, broadcasters, the falsely accused, prostitutes, repentant thieves, pharmacists, archers, pawnbrokers

St Nicholas
Saint Nicholas (Greek: Άγιος Νικόλαος, Hagios ["holy"] Nicolaos ["victory of the people"]) (270–6 December 343),[3][4] also called Nikolaos of Myra, was a historic 4th-century saint and Greek[5] Bishop of Myra (Demre, in Lycia, part of modern-day Turkey). Because of the many miracles attributed to his intercession, he is also known as Nikolaos the Wonderworker (Greek: Νικόλαος ο Θαυματουργός, Nikolaos o Thaumaturgos). He had a reputation for secret gift-giving, such as putting coins in the shoes of those who left them out for him, and thus became the model for Santa Claus, whose modern name comes from the Dutch Sinterklaas, itself from a series of elisions and corruptions of the transliteration of "Saint Nikolaos". His reputation evolved among the faithful, as was common for early Christian saints.[6] In 1087, his relics were furtively translated to Bari, in southeastern Italy; for this reason, he is also known as Nikolaos of Bari. His feastday is 6 December [O.S. 19 December].(--Wikipedia)

Here's to fishermen, prostitutes, and pawnbrokers!

Here's to filling shoes with candy and small gifts on this feast!

Here's to all the disorders and disrepair needing master-craftsmen to refashion!

Art is no abstinence.

Poetry is the next phase unphrased, merely attended.

Raven lands on dead branch. Surveys wetland. Leaps into downward sweep. Disappears.

What has it seen?

Where gone?

"Simplicity is the integration and unification of human capacities.
It is the peak sustained by a whole mountain of interconnected and interdependent parts, in which each part acts according to its nature while in complete harmony with every other part.
The vegetative, animal, and human faculties act in concert, each contributing in its own way and integrated into the more developed levels of consciousness. In this way they all are joined in complete submission to the spiritual will, which in turn is totally open to the divine will, both in oneself and in all one’s relationships." 
( - Thomas Keating, from the December issue of
The Contemplative Outreach News)

It is back on limb. Bald Mountain takes shape all around it's shimmering black placement.

Gone again, mountain returns to itself.

Coming to: ad venire; 9

I am listening for god. I am looking for god.

I will not hear god. I will not see god.

God is listening through me. God is seeing through me.

God is, as I am, nowhere to be heard. God is, as I am, nowhere to be seen.

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

Let's begin again.

I am listening for god. There is no "I."
There is only "I am" listening through what "I" mistakenly think of as me.

I am looking for god. There is no "I."
There is only "I am" looking through what "I" mistakenly think of as me.

What is...god...listening to?
What is...god...looking for?

God is listening to the empty sound where "I" no longer clinks against anything.
God is looking for nothing in that place where "I" once thought it was but cannot occupy due to absence.

Only god is. Nothing else is.

What does this mean?

Look!
Listen!

Stop no...stopping here!

Go on!

Really...go on!

What is going on?
Who is going on?

Archaic Torso of Apollo

We cannot know his legendary head
with eyes like ripening fruit. And yet his torso
is still suffused with brilliance from inside,
like a lamp, in which his gaze, now turned to low,

gleams in all its power. Otherwise
the curved breast could not dazzle you so, nor could
a smile run through the placid hips and thighs
to that dark center where procreation flared.

Otherwise this stone would seem defaced
beneath the translucent cascade of the shoulders
and would not glisten like a wild beast’s fur:

would not, from all the borders of itself,
burst like a star: for here there is no place
that does not see you. You must change your life.

(Poem by Rainer Maria Rilke)

We are neither here nor there.

Where are we? Where am I?
We don't know. I don't know.

For "here/there" is no place.
"That" does not see you.

You are listened through.
You are seen through.

God is doing-this. Listening.
God is observing-this. Looking.

Is there anyone hearing?
Is there anyone seeing?

Yes, yes, no/one.

Yes, yes, every/one.

You are correct -- there is nothing being said here.

Only the saying itself, the seeing itself, matters.

God is seeing/itself.
God is saying/itself.

God is where I am not to be found.

Coming to: ad venire; 8

Sabbath. (Sabbaton, in Greek. Shabbath, in Hebrew.) To rest.

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

Emmet Fox says that righteousness is harmonious thinking.

May each rest well. Today. In life. Through death.

Allowing whatever we are coming to brighten the night.

Coming to: ad venire; 7

If Christ were to appear, silence would no longer seem to permeate everything, silence would be everything.

Who would consider breaking silence?

Once, when we knew nothing about silence, we broke it. Scattered shards of words, billions beyond billions of splintered syllables, fell pell mell to ground covering pure insight with unfocused debris of echolalic tintinnabulation masquerading as approximate meaning.

Cacophony came to be the noise of our cracked communication. And we became Man. And dwelt in the caustic chat of the unsound.

you shall above all things be glad and young

you shall above all things be glad and young
For if you're young,whatever life you wear


it will become you;and if you are glad
whatever's living will yourself become.
Girlboys may nothing more than boygirls need:
i can entirely her only love


whose any mystery makes every man's
flesh put space on;and his mind take off time


that you should ever think,may god forbid
and (in his mercy) your true lover spare:
for that way knowledge lies,the foetal grave
called progress,and negation's dead undoom.


I'd rather learn from one bird how to sing
than teach ten thousand stars how not to dance

(poem by ee cummings)

A man in prison yesterday sang German lyrics from Schiller and Handel, his melodious bass draping the table with thick wool warmth in the center of chill cinderblock surround. His dazzling conversational wit and learning enough to frighten away. I was charmed. What trouble is sure to follow!

He spoke of the sweetness of seeing. How those who see will not cease presenting the seen to the unseeing. A missionary of the apparent, this wandering Jew arrived like some brooding Sephardim Eli Wiesel creation fallen from esoteric Nubian pages out of Legends of Our Time.

Are we still interested in looking for Christ?

It is useless.

We are being looked through.

Being.

Looking.

Through.

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)

Love is neither the answer nor the question.

Rather, love is the phenome/phoneme of silence in its selfsame original dwelling within...what is...all that is.

Coming to: ad venire; 6

One creation, many corrections.

Something in last night's Course in Miracles conversation at the hermitage brought home a 30 year riddle posed by a couple in Saco correcting my statement beginning with "We create..." with their "God creates, man invents."

I chewed on that these years until last night. Ellen was saying something about creating and the dusty riddle appeared, looked at me, and asked: Ready yet?

There's only one creation-- and this is it, we are it. We, in turn, take what is created and invent ways and doodads, fancy replications and unique objects-- whether from materials or colors or words.

Paul and Kerry would be unsurprised to know it took me all these years to get their words from that 2nd floor office overlooking fields of children living away from home. They thought, even then, 'Nice enough fellow, a little slow,' and they were right.

The Course says this:

What is a Miracle ?


A miracle is a correction. It does not create, nor really change at all. It merely looks on devastation, and reminds the mind that what it sees is false. It undoes error, but does not attempt to go beyond perception, nor exceed the function of forgiveness. Thus it stays within time’s limits. Yet it paves the way for the return of timelessness and love’s awakening, for fear must slip away under the gentle remedy it gives.

A miracle contains the gift of grace, for it is given and received as one. And thus it illustrates the law of truth the world does not obey, because it fails entirely to understand its ways. A miracle inverts perception which was upside-down before, and thus it ends the strange distortions that were manifest. Now is perception open to the truth. Now is forgiveness seen as justified.

Forgiveness is the home of miracles. The eyes of Christ deliver them to all they look upon in mercy and in love. Perception stands corrected in His sight, and what was meant to curse has come to bless. Each lily of forgiveness offers all the world the silent miracle of love. And each is laid before the Word of God upon the universal altar to Creator and creation, in the Light of perfect purity and endless joy.

The miracle is taken first on faith, because to ask for it implies the mind has been made ready to conceive of what it cannot see and does not understand. Yet faith will bring its witnesses to show that what it rested on is really there. And thus the miracle will justify your faith in it, and show it rested on a world more real than what you saw before; a world redeemed from what you thought you saw.

Miracles fall like drops of healing rain from Heaven on a dry and dusty world, where starved and thirsty creatures came to die. Now they have water. Now the world is green. And everywhere the signs of life spring up, to show that what is born can never die, for what has life has immortality. (from ACIM)

Throw in a response to the unasked question: "What is the now?" and the response embedded above is: " 'Now' is perception open to the truth. 'Now' is forgiveness seen as justified."

We are created as one. All of us. Everything. Nothing outside. Nothing beyond.

When we do 'go beyond' we see this truth -- there's nothing there -- all is here, each and all included. When that 'nothing' is fully experienced an enlightenment takes place with the realization that wholeness is all there is and that even nothing is included. The experience of nothing is the awakening that something and nothing are not two things-- one is the other, the other...one.

But without this touch of nothingness in our lives our perceptions remain incomplete and wander off into dichotomy and fragmentation, judgments of separation and belief in the detachment of one thing from the other, one people from other people. Our whole belief in the current dissociative insanity of modern life, political state, and religious exceptualism is based on our inaccurate perception and inauthentic belief.

Something sweeter and more loving, kinder and simpler awaits our entering into it. One could say 'God' awaits our arrival at nothing-other than God.

The miracle is a correction, not a change. We've never left the one creation we are. When our perceptions to the contrary find their correction, finding their way back from wrong-turning thought and misdirected-actions through nothing-doing, we stand corrected, returning to our source-being as who-we-are, here, and now.

One creation; many corrections.

When Saskia comes down, I ask her, without her knowing what I am writing, for a last line. She says:
"Upon awakening there's sadness realizing a whole generation is gone and I arrive downstairs to burning candles, hint of incense, and sacred sounds enveloping ancestry."

To a Quaker minister

Thank you,
Charlie,
For helping us
With silence to
Voice our love

Coming to: ad venire; 5

Thanks. To November. Welcome December. Ninth meets tenth under effective guise of eleven and twelve.

HONORARY JEW
By John Repp

The first year, I grated potatoes, chopped onions
& watched. The second year, I fed all but the eggs

into the machine & said I'll do the latkes & did,
my pile of crisp delights borne to the feast by the wife

who baffled me, our books closed, banter hushed,
money useless in the apartment—house, my in-laws called it,

new-wave thump at one end, ganja reek at the other—
in which she'd knelt to tell the no one who listened

no more no no more no a three-year-old mouthing
the essential prayer. The uncle made rich by a song

stacked three & dug in, talking critics & Koch—
everyone crunching now, slathering applesauce, slurping tea—

talking Rabin & Mehitabel, radio & Durrell,
how a song is a poem or it isn't a song

& vice-versa. Done, he pointed a greasy finger
at me, said You can't be a goy. You—I say it

for all to hear—are an honorary Jew!
which, impossible dream, my latkes lived up to

for five more years. Then the wailing.
Then the dust.

(from The Poetry Foundation)

I've begun to feel like an old Jew in a crowd of young Christians and Muslims. They are civil enough, but I'm cautious. Even YHWH (bend my knee, peace be upon him) has gestured that waving dismissal at me like a hand dispassionately pulling the lever of slot machine no longer expecting anything from it.

As an old Jew I walk my childhood Brooklyn neighborhood past 70th street Herskowitz and 69th street Birdovitch grocery stores. PS 205 on 68th street where Goldberg shot his never-failing driving left handed fading layup in the gym decades before his television series became popular, and Blyberg schlepped stickball broom handle to inner courtyard white chalked strike zone on brick wall for our daily ritual.

I look like Martin Landau in Mitch Albom's Hallmark drama of his book Have a Little Faith about an old rabbi blessing the world with weary resolve and steadfast reminiscence. Like Herb Fink's hand falling forward similar to YHWH's after being asked how he was, saying "Don't ask!" even though you had. I'm the old church with hole in roof the black preacher labors beneath.

Faith! The perfectly absurd response to a perfectly absurd world. To luxuriate in recollection is gift of daydream. The realm of daily life is a mitzvah of daily prayer sent into vacant sanctuaries where, on Saturdays across from schoolyard stickball games, only a goy could throw light switches for temple service. It was my first ecumenical sermon-- lighting up the 67th street minyan. Was "goy" contraction for "good boy" -- what the yamulka'd old man with wispy long white beard said each time after?

Reminisce and Return was the theme in last night's class at university. "Erinnerung Schweigen" -- to luxuriate in recollection, is more: memory of silence, or, to bring through mind through silence. Afterward we watched Kieslowski's "Bleu" to deepen our peregrination.

Not yet dawn. Rambling recall through hazy memory on streets and faces of childhood haunts.

Sh'ma Yis'ra'eil Adonai Eloheinu Adonai echad.
Hear, Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is One.
http://www.jewfaq.org/prayer/shma.gif

I am this haunted prayer.
Or, as poem:

I Am
This
Haunted
Prayer

Coming to: ad venire; 4

What is there to look forward to?

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

The Heart Sutra says form is emptiness, emptiness is form. Which makes, of course, everything clear. My murky mind has difficulty seeing this through. Trouble is resident companion of murky mind.

If the racial Other aspires to equal footing on the socioeconomic playing field, he is tasked with forcing his way out of the categorical cul-de-sac that his name and appearance otherwise squeeze him into. We call the process by which he does this “assimilation.” Though the Latin root here—shared with the other word “similar”—implies that the process is one of becoming absorbed or incorporated, it is a process that relies first on the negation of one identity in order to adopt another. In this sense, assimilation is a destructive rather than constructive process. It isn’t a come-as-you-are proposition, a simple matter of being integrated into the American milieu because there exists a standing invitation to do so. Rather, assimilation first requires refuting assumptions the culture makes about the immigrant based on race, and in this sense assimilation requires the erasure of one’s preexisting cultural identity even though that identity wasn’t contingent upon race in the first place.
(from, Writing Like a White Guy, On language, race, and poetry. By Jaswinder Bolina, Poetry Foundation,
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/article/243072)

The phrasing isn't form is 'similar' to emptiness, emptiness 'similar' to form.

One is the other.

If one is the other, then there is no other. If this is true, there is no one either.

No one; no other.

Each is itself as it is.

What does this mean for us?

Thich Nhat Hanh might quietly smile and say, "Interbeing!" We inter-are.

If so, then here is there, and there is here.

Spirituality and Corporeality are now interchangeably one-another with unmurky mind.

O God! What are you looking forward to?

Zazen in Merton Retreat.

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)

After practice we leave in silence.

Teachers arrive then depart.

Barn door is open.

Coming to: ad venire; 3

Empty watch. Nothing to see. You and me.

Are we coming to?

The Pasture
BY ROBERT FROST

I'm going out to clean the pasture spring;
I'll only stop to rake the leaves away
(And wait to watch the water clear, I may):
I sha'n't be gone long.—You come too.

I'm going out to fetch the little calf
That's standing by the mother. It's so young,
It totters when she licks it with her tongue.
I sha'n't be gone long.—You come too.

Advent, coming to, is harder than it seems. The narrative isn't about happily ever after. The narrative is about reality always here.

Walk out with me.

"There's a birthing into awareness of what the reality is right now." (Saskia says this, in from meditation cabin, going up stairs, white Border Collie crouching over green tennis ball, morning light remarkably simply there at window squares.)

I totter these days.

I sha'n't be in breath long.

You'll find this too.

Once during slender crescent light
I wanted to be a poet
When dawn disappeared into daylight
I found I was merely a word
Waiting to be pronounced
Within an image
Of night
New moon
And thus
Not there

Coming to: ad venire; 2

One is the loveliest number. Nothing is left out.

Yet, when one and nothing appear together, perfection is tickled..

Not everyone feels that way. So it is the profession of assassin proliferates today. Literally in the corridors of power and governance, figuratively in the hearts and minds of non-Buddhists and unintelligent problem solvers. 'Kill,' they say, 'rid me of these bothersome others!'

(Thich Nhat Hanh says you are a Buddhist if you practice awareness, concentration, and insight. He feels there are many who do not consider themselves Buddhists who are.)

21 The faithful city, what a harlot she has become! Zion, once full of fair judgement, where saving justice used to dwell, but now assassins!
(New Jerusalem Bible, Isaiah 1: 21)

'Now-assassins' murder what they consider 'other' to them. Drones and scope-rifles, IEDs and injected poisons, calculating security and ambitious prosecutors -- combine to wage war on 'now' by eliminating it, leaving in their minds only revenged past and ravaged future.

FAR AWAY, FAR AWAY . . .
By Franco Fortini

Far away, far away, men making wars.
Other folk's blood spilt on other folk's floors.

Only this morning I wounded my finger:
a thorn on my rosebush pierced like a stinger.

Sucking that finger, I thought of the war.
Sad is the earth! And those people, so poor!

I'm of no help, being here and not there,
nor can I reach them, by sea or by air.

And what if I could—what good could I do?
My Arabic's terrible! My English is, too!

What, should I stroll through the fields of the dead
leaving sheaves of my verses under each head?

No. Enough of this wretched irony-fest.
Let's put on a coat. The sun's low in the west.
(— Translated by Geoffrey Brock)

Christ looks out from the place of this moment.

Christ now has a coat around slumping shoulders.

To be born or not to be born?

This is what is -- coming to -- be the question.

A Postmortem Guide
For my eulogist, in advance

Do not praise me for my exceptional serenity.
Can't you see I've turned away
from the large excitements,
and have accepted all the troubles?

Go down to the old cemetery; you'll see
there's nothing definitive to be said.
The dead once were all kinds---
boundary breakers and scalawags,
martyrs of the flesh, and so many
dumb bunnies of duty, unbearably nice.

I've been a little of each.

And, please, resist the temptation
of speaking about virtue.
The seldom-tempted are too fond
of that word, the small-
spirited, the unburdened.
Know that I've admired in others
only the fraught straining
to be good.

Adam's my man and Eve's not to blame.
He bit in; it made no sense to stop.

Still, for accuracy's sake you might say
I oftened stopped,
that I rarely went as far as I dreamed.

And since you know my hardships,
understand that they're mere bump and setback
against history's horror.
Remind those seated, perhaps weeping,
how obscene it is
for some of us to complain.

Tell them I had second chances.
I knew joy.
I was burned by books early
and kept sidling up to the flame.

Tell them that at the end I had no need
for God, who'd become just a story
I once loved, one of many
with concealments and late-night rescues,
high sentence and pomp. The truth is
I learned to live without hope
as well as I could, almost happily,
in the despoiled and radiant now.

You who are one of them, say that I loved
my companions most of all.
In all sincerity, say that they provided
a better way to be alone.
(From Different Hours by Stephen Dunn published by W. W. Norton & Company 2000)

The now-assassins have never seen the likes of Christ.

It makes no sense to stop.

Not now.

The assassins are never convinced.

Christ, you and the assassins and I, are each now wondering how to be here alone.

(Or, as a poem:)

Christ

(you and the assassins and I)

are each
now
wondering
how to be
here
alone
(wfh)

To be alone is to be (complete-ly) with everyone.

Coming to: ad venire; 1

Done.

There's nothing to be none.

Enter Vladimir.
ESTRAGON:
(giving up again). Nothing to be done.
VLADIMIR:
(advancing with short, stiff strides, legs wide apart). I'm beginning to come round to that opinion. All my life I've tried to put it from me, saying Vladimir, be reasonable, you haven't yet tried everything. And I resumed the struggle. (He broods, musing on the struggle. Turning to Estragon.) So there you are again.
ESTRAGON:
Am I?
VLADIMIR:
I'm glad to see you back. I thought you were gone forever.
ESTRAGON:
Me too.
VLADIMIR:
Together again at last! We'll have to celebrate this. But how? (He reflects.) Get up till I embrace you.
ESTRAGON:
(irritably). Not now, not now.
VLADIMIR:
(hurt, coldly). May one inquire where His Highness spent the night?
ESTRAGON:
In a ditch.
VLADIMIR:
(admiringly). A ditch! Where?
ESTRAGON:
(without gesture). Over there.
VLADIMIR:
And they didn't beat you?
ESTRAGON:
Beat me? Certainly they beat me.
VLADIMIR:
The same lot as usual?
ESTRAGON:
The same? I don't know.
VLADIMIR:
When I think of it . . . all these years . . . but for me . . . where would you be . . . (Decisively.) You'd be nothing more than a little heap of bones at the present minute, no doubt about it.
ESTRAGON:
And what of it?
VLADIMIR:
(gloomily). It's too much for one man. (Pause. Cheerfully.) On the other hand what's the good of losing heart now, that's what I say. We should have thought of it a million years ago, in the nineties.
(from Waiting for Godot, by Samuel Beckett, Act 1, opening lines)

What is? What is the good? What is the good of losing heart?

Now?

You, Lord, yourself are our Father,
‘Our Redeemer’ is your ancient name.
Why, Lord, leave us to stray from your ways
and harden our hearts against fearing you?
Return, for the sake of your servants,
the tribes of your inheritance.

Oh, that you would tear the heavens open and come down!
– at your Presence the mountains would melt.

No ear has heard,
no eye has seen
any god but you act like this
for those who trust him.
You guide those who act with integrity
and keep your ways in mind.
(First reading, 1st Advent, Isaiah 63:16-17,64:1,3-8)

Has the Lord strayed from his ways? Or have we strayed? From our ways? From his ways?

Are these 'ways' one or two?

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)

We think, or want to think Act 2 will be better, will resolve absence and expectation, will reveal all that will be revealed. We are, not mistaken, rather, expect-taken. 'Expect-taken' is 1st cousin once-removed of expectation.

Expectations of well-being

Richard Lazarus asserts that people become accustomed to positive or negative life experiences which lead to favorable or unfavorable expectations of their present and near-future circumstances. Lazarus notes the widely accepted philosophical principle that "happiness depends on the background psychological status of the person...and cannot be well predicted without reference to" one's expectations.[1]
With regard to happiness or unhappiness, Lazarus notes that "people whose objective conditions of life are those of hardship and deprivation often make a positive assessment of their well-being," while "people who are objectively well off...often make a negative assessment of their well-being." Lazarus argues that "the most sensible explanation of this apparent paradox is that people...develop favorable or unfavorable expectations" that guide such assessments.[1]

Expectations Impact on Beliefs

The famous sociologist, Robert K. Merton, wrote that a person's expectation is directly linked to the Self-fulfilling Prophecy. Whether or not such an expectation was truthful or not has little or no effect on the outcome. If a person believes what they are told or convinces himself/herself of the fact, chances are this person will see the expectation to its' inevitable conclusion. There is an inherent danger in this kind of labeling especially for the educator. Since children are easily convinced of certain tenants [sic;cf. tenets] especially when told to them by an authority figure like a parent or teacher, they may believe whatever is taught to them even if what is taught has no factual basis. If the student or child were to act on false information, certain positive or negative unintended consequences could result. If overly positive or elevated expectations were used to describe or manipulate a person's self-image and execution falls short, the results could be a total reversal of that person's self-confidence. If thought of in terms of causality or cause and effect, the higher a person's expectation and the lower the execution, the higher the frustration level may become. This in turn could cause a total cessation of effort and motivate the person to quit.
(--Expectation (epistemic), From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)

I have the near-cousin companioning this new liturgical season.

Expect-taken.

Rorate caeli desuper, et nubes pluant iustum.
Drop down dew, ye heavens, from above, and let the clouds rain the Just One.
http://www.chantcd.com/lyrics/rorate_caeli_desuper.htm

Just One.

No Act 2.

Just one.

One.

Of two dropped down.

There's nothing to be none.

Empty waiting presence.

The surprise is the ferocity men in power show when nobodies threaten their power and control.

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)

There is now no doubt that the powerful and ferocious are failing to keep the earth under their feet.

Some again keep watch for the Christ. Will he come again into the narrative world of liturgical repetition? Can the theatre of creche and Christmas lore lure us into a soporific hope in the afterlife rewards of faithful observance?

Or is the Earth about to come into its own unstoried phenomenology where what is appearing is doing so always for this moment only?

Christ is this moment taking place.

See it, or don't.

But no pretending or pretence substitutes.

Just itself is all there is.

Birth it, or resurrect it, but don't bullshit. There's no bullshit possible. Not any longer.

This moment is taking place.

It's never enough.

Unless you say it is.

Then it is.

Enough.

The True Wisdom.* 6 Yet we do speak a wisdom to those who are mature, but not a wisdom of this age, nor of the rulers of this age who are passing away. 7 Rather, we speak God’s wisdom,* mysterious, hidden, which God predetermined before the ages for our glory, 8 and which none of the rulers of this age* knew; for if they had known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. 9 But as it is written:

“What eye has not seen, and ear has not heard,

and what has not entered the human heart,

what God has prepared for those who love him,”

this God has revealed to us through the Spirit.

10 For the Spirit scrutinizes everything, even the depths of God. 11 Among human beings, who knows what pertains to a person except the spirit of the person that is within? Similarly, no one knows what pertains to God except the Spirit of God. 12 We have not received the spirit of the world but the Spirit that is from God, so that we may understand the things freely given us by God. 13 And we speak about them not with words taught by human wisdom, but with words taught by the Spirit, describing spiritual realities in spiritual terms.* (1Cor2:6-10)

Breathe in.

There is no channeling.

Only this thought. This moment. This insight.

Is.

Enough.

We tell stories, act through narratives, remember times, laugh, feast, and fade off.

Thanksgiving.

On the bay, rowing alone, a nickel on red nun #4 for passage fee, then back to harbor solitude extended.

Thanksgiving.

If there was anything I wanted, I cannot recall what it might be.

Thanks.

Giving.

Silence of snow. Tarps on woodpiles. Dawn turns in eastern horizon. Eve of Thanksgiving.

Stillness.

Meditation Hall

Clear the land, thatch the rush for roof,
All around cherish the empty, the pure.
Mountain blossoms fall by a secluded door,
Within, one who has forgotten the world's schemings.
Concern with existence needs no possession,
Comprehending the void does not wait upon reason.
All things are of conditions born,
Profound is the silence in the midst of clamor.
A person's mind is very much the same;
A bird in flight, leaving no tracks behind.
- Liu Tsung-yuan (773-819)

What does it mean to be a monastic of no other?

Gospel, Luke 21:12-19
Jesus said: Men will seize you and persecute you; they will hand you over to the synagogues and to imprisonment, and bring you before kings and governors because of my name – and that will be your opportunity to bear witness. Keep this carefully in mind: you are not to prepare your defence, because I myself shall give you an eloquence and a wisdom that none of your opponents will be able to resist or contradict. You will be betrayed even by parents and brothers, relations and friends; and some of you will be put to death. You will be hated by all men on account of my name, but not a hair of your head will be lost. Your endurance will win you your lives.’

What is my life? If I am to win it, it seems important to know what it is.

Here is my life.

Now is my life.

What is here?

What is now?

This!

No defense. No loss. No gain. Just this as it is every single awareness every single time.

There is no other. There is one thing. We are this one thing.

How can we possible grasp what it means to be this one thing?

Snow continues to fall. Muted tires roll on Barnestown Road. Every slumbering awareness is slowing waking from sleep.

'Win,' from Sanskrit, vanas, means 'desire,' 'struggle,' -- at the same time embraces its extension -- 'desireless' 'effortless' so as to complete its surround.

We are the surround of being-here.

God-love being-here, as each and all is!

Pepper spray is the new language of the police.

JFK's assassination is in an off year at 48, thus is kept quietly.

The liturgical year is in limbo. Between Christ the King and 1st Advent.

Cecilia inspires masses written in her musical honor.

Clouds enter Bangor in advance of tomorrow's storm.

We walk 5.80km through City Forest, delighted at the find.

Afternoon reading (None) 1 Corinthians 12:24,25-26 ©
God has arranged the body and that there may not be disagreements inside the body, but that each part may be equally concerned for all the others. If one part is hurt, all parts are hurt with it. If one part is given special honour, all parts enjoy it.

Trees are bare; they've entered the bed of November.

Some look at us and wonder if there'll ever be a tipping number of those who see the embodying connectivity of divinity that ligatures our seeming decatenation.

Loving God, I think, means serving the whole body.

Each.

All.

Stacking wood. One stick on another. I have nothing else to do.

Dark and dim, the Bamboo Grove Monastery,
Faint and faraway, the sound of bells at dusk.
Your bamboo hat carrying home the evening sun,
Alone you return to the distant green hills.
- Tu Fu (712-770)

Green wood from Belfast. Some very seasoned from Southwick. One stick atop another. Back and forth. Back and forth.

There is no controlling life.

There is only temporary balance.

Each stick of wood another breath.

Trip someone up, you are, perhaps, a "satan." That's what the word means way back down deep -- someone or something that trips up, like a root branch on a worn trail. Something that inhibits or opposes moving through or moving on.

There is no better somewhere else, smarter, more effective we can control.

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

There is only this path which is the path you are on, upon which, if travelled, would reveal to you everything needed.

Walk that path.

Don't let anyone tell you not to.

If you trip, catch balance again. If fall, rise again.

Trust, radically!

Dark early. Cold from hard row on Bay chills bones. Bed early.

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)

There is no knowing.

Not anything.

So, we practice.

Not knowing.

Here.

In the morning, when Earth feels light lift night from surface, prayer wanders from sleep into open recollection, and we are once again the still and vibrant sound of cosmotheandric spirituality, the surround of wholeness stretching embrace of harmlessness throughout all in this glorious reality called by us dawn, twilight, gazing God.

17 Domine labia mea aperies et os meum adnuntiabit laudem tuam
17 O Lord, thou wilt open my lips: and my mouth shall declare thy praise.
(from Paalm 51)

It's a lot of money. Let's say it has been a necessary expenditure. I'm uncertain it is, but let's say so. It's a lot of money for war and death.

If Congress also approves the FY2012 war funding request of $132 billion, cumulative war funding would then reach $1.415 trillion total including:
• $823 billion for Iraq (63%);
• $557 billion for Afghanistan (35%);
• $29 billion for enhanced security (2%); and
• $6 billion unallocated DOD costs (1/2%) (see Table 1)

(from, The Cost of Iraq, Afghanistan, and Other Global War on Terror Operations Since 9/11
Amy Belasco
Specialist in U.S. Defense Policy and Budget March 29, 2011)
In, Congressional Research Service Report for Congress
Prepared for Members and Committees of Congress

I'd prefer a different expenditure of so much money, such as health care, housing, jobs, or education grants to every student young or old.

It says a lot about us, our war fondness. I wonder about our sanity and souls. Surely it is insane to want to destroy and kill, over and over, even in the name of God, freedom, and security?

It's a lot to consider.

No one wants sin. It is gone.

So, let it go.

And it is.

Tired, there is no other place than sleep.

The sound of bell!

The following day we walk the river, we walk the beach by the ocean.

We walk the wind and rest in the company of family, eating, sleeping, laughing, some tears and of course the stories.

HISTORY

There is no great and no small
To the Soul that maketh all:
And where it cometh, all things are
And it cometh everywhere.

I am owner of the sphere,
Of the seven stars and the solar year,
Of Caesar's hand, and Plato's brain,
Of Lord Christ's heart, and Shakspeare's strain.
(Ralph Waldo Emerson)

We are what we tell ourselves we are.

Today we are family

The opening paragraph of To Bless the Space Between Us, A Book of Blessings, by Irish poet and spiritual philosopher John O'Donohue goes as follows:



"There is a quiet light that shines in every heart. It draws no attention to itself, though it is always secretly there. It is what illuminates our minds to see beauty, our desire to seek possibility, and our hearts to love life. Without this subtle quickening our days would be empty and wearisome, and no horizon would ever awaken our longing. Our passion for life is quietly sustained from somewhere in us that is welded to the energy and excitement of life. This shy inner light is what enables us to recognize and receive our very presence here as blessing. We enter the world as strangers who all at once become heirs to a harvest of memory, spirit, and dream that has long preceded us and will now enfold, nourish, and sustain us. The gift of the world is our first blessing."

We blessed Erika, and we were blessed by Erika, today as we placed her in the earth in New Bedford.

She tricked us into coming together as a body of beings longing for blessing. We thought we'd gathered to bury her. Rather we were there to receive her blessing.

As we do whenever someone understands what is taking place between us and invites us into this middle presence, a heaven by no other name.

Festivities continue upstairs.

Solitude becomes me.

At a Course in Miracles gathering Thursday evening as Erika lay in repose in "The Mutti Room" in Camden, Maine, dressed in her Thanksgiving attire, surrounded by the handiwork reds of her stitchery threads, receiving visitors touched by loving presence, a woman named Rosie from another room in final circle spoke the phrase -- "Erika's passing."

It' a wonderful phrase describing what has happened this week, these eight weeks following diagnosis, and the 89 years following her birth -- Erika's passing!

She is now and has always been passing through.

As are we all -- passing through.

We sometimes think that we're here to stay, that we own the place, that change and transition are unfortunate occurrences we have to tolerate and endure.

I think there's another way to look at it.

Erika, Mutti, Omi, Urgroßmutter, has shown us and is showing us how it is, how to live on this earth, even now, as she takes whatever steps there are to take beyond the last step of Thursday morning around 2am when she passed through her body for the last time in this realm exiting what we call the limitations of 'time' and 'space' and gliding with gracious love into the mysterious openness of timeless presence where the One we call Love Itself celebrates wholeness with this ever-new creation of loving light we have known by the names "Erika," "Mrs. Huising," "Mutti," "Omi," and "Dear Treasure."

Some would say: "She's gone," and they'd be right -- she is. Some would say, "She's gone beyond," and they'd be right -- she has. And still others would say, "She's still with us, and will never leave us." And these, too, are right -- feel her in your heart and mind, see her in your cups of tea, hear her in clinking glasses raised with endearing joy and laughter whenever family gather anywhere.

She knows now and shows here. She knows now and shows here that each one is right, that each one is an appreciated contribution to the extraordinary embrace of smiling welcome this good woman practiced as her daily yoga.

Erika would want us, I believe, to know that she's all right, that we're all right, that it's all right -- that at the deepest, truest, lightest level it's all love, and light, and bliss, and kindness, and hospitality, and family, and the community of everyone who lives and dies, suffers and rejoices, eats and drinks, weeps and laughs.

Wir loben Gott und sagen Dank,
Fur alles, auch für Speis und Trank
In Jesus Namen, Amen!

Today I take liberties to translate this prayer as:

"We happily speak our praise with God --
For everything and everyone --

for this woman, this family member, this friend, this sister of God-With-Us (also named Emmanuel, Jesus, Mary's child, the Christ),

for the food and drink

Of love, and love, and, yes, love!"

And so, and so, and so -- In the name of all that is holy, we thank you, dear woman, for bringing us here today.

Here, with one another, being-with everything, passing through!

The words heard from her so often are the words that apply so intimately to her: Schatzilein, Liebchen, Hertzilein

Treasured one! Loved-one! Heart-felt one!

Danke sehr!

Bitte schon!

We are passing through this experience with Erika's love.

May this experience be of benefit to each of us as well as all people everywhere longing for such an experience with generous love and gracious presence!

Prosit! Let it be!

Then, nearing 2am, after a passion of final breaths, there were no more. Struggle of transition coming to quiet completion, Erika returns to origin. We sit in silent vigil for a while. Tears in her presence. The women prepare to wash and ready her body for journey.

Harp music graced the room.

Kindness and compassion were the notes.

These will be known as her last days. In front room, hospital bed, she breathes asleep the rhythmic cadences of prolonging reverie.

Hospice officially began today.

This house becomes a holy place.

As life continues through it all. Hers and ours.

Don't fear the facts. That's what the reading from tonight's practice included. We have nothing to fear with the truth. It's only the truth.

Far, faraway, steep mountain paths,
Treacherous and narrow, ten thousand feet up;
Over boulders and bridges, lichens of green,
White clouds are often seen soaring.
A cascade suspends in mid-air like a bolt of silk;
The moon's reflection falls on a deep pool, glittering.
I'll climb up the magnificent mountain peak,
To await the arrival of a solitary crane.
- Meng Hao-jan (689-740)

So, we vigil with Erika.

Saskia naps on pull-out chair. I sit in corner chair. The monk and the Sushi folks didn't make it to Camden. There were only a handful of us at the Mahabharata discussion at the library. And now it is night. What can go wrong has. No, that's not it. What can go on will.

WILD PEACE

Not the peace of a cease-fire,
not even the vision of the wolf and the lamb,
but rather
as in the heart when the excitement is over
and you can talk only about a great weariness.
I know that I know how to kill,
that makes me an adult.
And my son plays with a toy gun that knows
how to open and close its eyes and say Mama.
A peace
without the big noise of beating swords into ploughshares,
without words, without
the thud of the heavy rubber stamp: let it be
light, floating, like lazy white foam.
A little rest for the wounds—
who speaks of healing?
(And the howl of the orphans is passed from one generation
to the next, as in a relay race:
the baton never falls.)

Let it come
like wildflowers,
suddenly, because the field
must have it: wildpeace.

(Yehuda Amichai, “Wildpeace” from Selected Poetry. University of California Press.)

Mother and daughter sleep in hot room at midnight.

Wildflowers in autumn chill.

A new day