A morning colloquia

Maine State Prison, Lifetime Portfolio Project, A facilitated conversation, Friday 10Feb2012

Theme: QUESTIONING SPIRITUALITY -- LEARNING TO LISTEN TO WHAT WE ARE...ASKING

(or: A SPIRITUALITY IN AND OUT OF PRISON 

 A New Alphabet & Outline for Our Consideration)

Quote: "Once you have learned how to ask relevant and appropriate questions, you have learned how to learn and no one can keep you from learning whatever you want or need to know." (--Neil Postman and Charles Weingartner, in, Teaching as a Subversive Activity)

We have questions. Always. For example: What is spirituality? Or more directly: What is spirituality for me, at this moment of my life, in this place -- What do I think? What am I practicing?

Spirituality is the one thing that is ours. It is our creation. It is our choice. It is our experience. No one can give it to you, nor take it from you. No one can do it for you. Your spirituality is unique to you. How you see the world is your sight. What you think of the world is your thoughts. And how you engage the world is your practice.

1. Questioning. When a question comes to mind for you when you think of spirituality or religion,  write it down.
2. Sit with it a while. Let it form itself within you. Listen to what is taking place. When the time is right we can share our question(s) with each other, and see what emerges.
3. Conversation is what we, as a group, would  be willing to look at with regard to our questions or ideas about spirituality or anything related to it.

~  ~  ~ MiniLecture: An Alphabet of Spirituality ~  ~  ~

A: Aleph or Alpha

 The first letters of the Hebrew and Greek alphabet. Hebrew Aleph א, Greek, Alpha; and Arabic ʾAlif ا.” (Wikipedia)

“A” stands for beginning, first things, source, origin. We have to start somewhere. Anytime we consider spirituality we might begin again to look at what we think is the source of the cosmos, all of what we see, our lives, our bodies, our minds, our being here. We ask: Where am I coming from? What am I doing here? Where do I want to be? How can I occupy this very space in a way that will serve as the beginning of everything that will follow?

B: Breathing.

“B” stands for breath. “Pneuma” in Greek; “Ruah” in Hebrew; “Spiritus” in Latin; “Prana” in Sanskrit (“vital life”). 

“B” for us today, breathing, is the great teacher. We have been breathing since the moment we were born, and every second, minute, hour, day, and year since. It is the life energy that connects us to everything and everybody. It helps regulate our heartbeat, our thinking, our every action. The breath is the silent invisible teacher that has been trying to get our attention for a very long time. It has something to tell us about our spirituality.

C: Contemplative

The Latin word contemplatio was used to translate the Greek word θεωρία (theoria). In a religious sense, contemplation is usually a type of prayer or meditation. Theoria (θεωρία) is Greek for contemplation.[1] It corresponds to the Latin word contemplatio, "looking at", "gazing at", "being aware of" (cf, Wikipedia)

“C” is contemplative, or “long aware looking.” Some say “long loving looking” which means to simply, merely, watch and become aware of what is right there in front of you, or what is taking place within you. There’s a quality of “rest” in the contemplative experience, meaning that we temporarily put aside or let fall our ordinary way of distrustful looking at things, our constant judging, formulating opinions and measuring people and situations against or by those opinions and judgments. We seldom see anything fresh or new or innocently. Contemplative practice invites us to free ourselves from the burden of wariness and fear for a brief while.

D: Death

Death is the opposite and necessary parallel to birth. Some think death is the end of life. It is. But not how we normally think of it. It occurs to me that one of the reasons we are frightened by death is because we are frightened by this present moment, this present reality, this-the-present. To dwell in the only thing there is, in the present moment, is to be alive. Not to dwell in the only thing there is, the present moment, is to be dead. 

“D,” death, is ‘not this.’  What we call the spiritual life is meditation on this, meditation in this, the present moment, here and now. The struggle of spirituality is not to believe that life is always elsewhere. We think it is in the past, in their thinking, in an imagined future, and we are unwilling to stay present. This unwillingness to stay present takes the form of substituting belief, opinion, rationalization, regret, hope, fear, or aversion for the mere presence of being-in-the-moment.

In the present moment everything arrives and everything departs. Nothing remains. What is this 'nothing?' This nothing is what is itself happening. To be alive, some say, is to be in God -- God being this present moment itself within us and surrounding us. Others feel that the word “God” is too loaded, and don’t use it.

E: Ever-present

The ever-present origin of life and being itself is our very home and dwelling-place, wherever we are, whatever time it is, no matter what we think, however chaotic or difficult things might appear. 

“E”  is ‘ever’ (meaning ‘always’). We long for ‘home.’ We long to belong. We wish for a time and a place when there is no trouble, where we are without fear, and we comfortably and carefully allow ourselves to love what we love. 

This ever-present origin is called by some “God.” Others see it as “Being,” or “Truth,” “Love,” or even “Now.” Whatever you call it, you are safe there, you are safe here. Nothing can harm you -- not the real you. When we allow what is true to be our residence, there is nothing to fear. 

Postscript:

We begin again; we breathe; we contemplate; we die to absence, not this; we dwell within the ever-present origin of what-is-here.

A new spirituality is being born in our lives right now right here. By practicing awareness and allowing ourselves to learn the language of the present moment, we start all over with this beginning, this breath, this caring gaze, this death of falseness and resurrection of who we really are, this entering the present and presence of Being-Itself.  

.   .   .   .   .

~ ~  Let’s find ourselves answering poems with questions, listening to what and who we are...asking  ~ ~ 

As God is

Innocence doesn't know.

Be innocent.

Anything; at all

What, if anything, remains?

Vipassana, or Insight meditation, is a way of training the mind to see things in a very special way as they happen. Seeing without using eyes is a special way of seeing. We train the mind to use our innate wisdom without using words, concepts, logic, or interpretation. In this training, concentration and mindfulness are united. Then wisdom arises and disintegrates what appears to be integrated. Our wisdom eye registers the constant flux of events that is taking place in every moment in our lives. Although this unbroken flux of events is what life is, one cannot be fully aware of this truth without paying attention to what is happening to one’s mind and body every waking moment. With developed insight, our mind can be fully aware of the evolving, processing, and dissolving of everything that happens to us.

So we train the mind to see things as they happen, neither before nor after. And we don’t cling to the past, the future, or even to the present. We participate in what is happening and at the same time observe it without clinging to the events of the past, the future, or the present. We experience our ego or self arising, dissolving, and evaporating without leaving a trace of it. We see how our greed, anger, and ignorance vanish as we see the reality in life. Mindfully we watch the body, feelings, sensations, perceptions, and consciousness and experience their dynamic nature.
(--from, Wisdom Arising, by Sri Lankan monk Bhante Henepola Gunaratana on training the mind’s eye with Vipassana meditation, Tricycle Magazine)

Nothing remains. Just this. And this. And this.

And this is nothing other than what this is. So, we ask: What is this? So, too, we answer: This is what is.

Nothing remains. Is this why we bury or burn what remains of the body at death? Earth and fire receive and consume our "remains," that which held and carried our movements memories and mental calculations when (we say) 'we were alive' those years of 'our life.'

NOTHING BUT DEATH

There are cemeteries that are lonely,
graves full of bones that do not make a sound,
the heart moving through a tunnel,
in it darkness, darkness, darkness,
like a shipwreck we die going into ourselves,
as though we were drowning inside our hearts,
as though we lived falling out of the skin into the soul.

And there are corpses,
feet made of cold and sticky clay,
death is inside the bones,
like a barking where there are no dogs,
coming out from bells somewhere, from graves somewhere,
growing in the damp air like tears of rain.

Sometimes I see alone
coffins under sail,
embarking with the pale dead, with women that have dead hair,
with bakers who are as white as angels,
and pensive young girls married to notary publics,
caskets sailing up the vertical river of the dead,
the river of dark purple,
moving upstream with sails filled out by the sound of death,
filled by the sound of death which is silence.

Death arrives among all that sound
like a shoe with no foot in it, like a suit with no man in it,
comes and knocks, using a ring with no stone in it, with no
finger in it,
comes and shouts with no mouth, with no tongue, with no
throat.
Nevertheless its steps can be heard
and its clothing makes a hushed sound, like a tree.

I'm not sure, I understand only a little, I can hardly see,
but it seems to me that its singing has the color of damp violets,
of violets that are at home in the earth,
because the face of death is green,
and the look death gives is green,
with the penetrating dampness of a violet leaf
and the somber color of embittered winter.

But death also goes through the world dressed as a broom,
lapping the floor, looking for dead bodies,
death is inside the broom,
the broom is the tongue of death looking for corpses,
it is the needle of death looking for thread.

Death is inside the folding cots:
it spends its life sleeping on the slow mattresses,
in the black blankets, and suddenly breathes out:
it blows out a mournful sound that swells the sheets,
and the beds go sailing toward a port
where death is waiting, dressed like an admiral.

(Poem by Pablo Neruda, Translated by Robert Bly)

It occurs to me that one of the reasons we are frightened by death is because we are frightened by this present moment, this present reality, this-the-present.

What we call the spiritual life is meditation on this, meditation in this, present moment. Those with no spiritual life are always elsewhere. In the past, in their thinking, in an imagined future, indisposed and unwilling to stay present. This unwillingness to stay present takes the form of substituting belief, opinion, rationalization, regret, hope, fear, or aversion for the mere presence of being-in-the-moment.

In the present moment everything arrives and everything departs. Nothing remains.

What is this 'nothing?'

This nothing is what is itself happening.

It is white dog staring at green tennis ball by rocking chair, a red octopus resting on his legs, ready to pounce. It is big brown/black German Shepherd dog lumbering into dining room interrupting the trajectory of scurrying Border Collie. It is opening door for two dogs to leap off new deck over cellar bulkhead. It is barking from dooryard, squeaky ceiling floor, blowing hot air, engine noise from passing cars out on road.

To practice meditation or the spiritual life is to practice presence, is to die to what is not this, is to dwell for the time-being here, is to receive and respond to what is here, is to be free from worrying about, trying to fix, attempting to change, or eliminate what is here as it is here.

This radical relationship to what is real and present is, curiously, nothing; is, paradoxically, death; is, remarkably, what remains of us when we have disappeared into the mere moment of our whole attention, our complete union with (what shall we call it?) Reality? God? Truth? Breakfast?

Anything.

"Stirb und Werde!" ( Die and Become!) Goethe's phrase doesn't phase us.

Partake of the great banquet.

Where we are. At all.

(fearless; earth) "Ite: ecce ego mitto vos sicut agnos inter lupos."

Bill Moyers and Jonathan Haidt hold our attention last night. Five of us gather to watch and listen, then sit around table with soup and bread speaking about what we saw and heard.

Our country is more politically polarized than ever. Is it possible to agree to disagree and still move on to solve our massive problems?  Or are the blind leading the blind — over the cliff?Bill and social psychologist Jonathan Haidt talk about the psychological underpinnings of our contentious culture, why we can’t trust our own opinions, and the demonizing of our adversaries. “When it gets so that your opponents are not just people you disagree with, but… the mental state in which I am fighting for good, and you are fighting for evil, it’s very difficult to compromise,” Haidt tells Moyers. “Compromise becomes a dirty word.” 

http://www.truth-out.org/jonathan-haidt-explains-our-contentious-culture/1328368654

Morning light reveals dull grey and tired brown of Bald Mountain out front room window across Barnestown Road.

The absence of snow and residue hard remnant of ground ice is notable.

Meditation is what we conclude will help. (The culture, not the winter mountain.)

Consider the world light,
And the spirit is not burdened;
Consider the myriad things slight,
And the mind is not confused.
Consider life and death equal,
And the intellect is not afraid;
Consider change as sameness,
And clarity is not obscured.  

 (Lao-tzu)

To look into what is looking into, us. To look through what is looking through, God.

We might have to drop all silly notions about ourselves ... and about God.

Holderlin writes in "The Poet's Vocation":

Fearless yet, if he must, man stands, and lonely
Before God, simplicity protects him,
No weapon does he need nor subterfuge
Until God's being "not there" helps him.
(--Friedrich Holderlin, in his Hyperion and Selected Poems)

Or , in another context:

In “On the Process of the Poetic Mind,” Hölderlin wrote:
“Man seeks to articulate his purpose both in an overly subjective and an overly objective state … Yet this purpose can be attained only in a sacred, divine feeling, one that is beautiful because it is neither simply agreeable and fortunate, neither simply sublime and strong, nor simply unified and tranquil, but which is all of these simultaneously – a feeling which is transcendental and where a pure, formal mood has been distilled from it that encompasses life in its entirety.”
He tells us what poetry is by telling us what it isn’t, neither simply this nor that, but a more inclusive “purpose.” It is “beautiful” but not merely agreeable, strong, peaceful. It is also beautiful for its trouble, passivity, turbulence. These are the final stanzas of the ode “Vulcan”:

Man is more pious than all other living
Things; yet, angry with the world outside,
He becomes more himself, free-born,
And, safe in his cottage, rests and wonders.
And there’s always at least one friendly spirit
Who gladly blesses him, and even when
The fierce, uneducated spirit-powers
Are angry, love still loves.

Paul Hoover’s penetrating introduction to the translations points out the importance of Hölderlin’s concept of “coming-to-be through a going away (ein Entstehen durch ein Vergehen) – a way of seeing, I think, in which the poet “becomes more himself.” Hoover says, “Dissolution and union are continual and universal, in Hölderlin’s view, at all levels of experience … It is not a world empty of meaning that speaks in Hölderlin but rather the precariousness of consciousness.” The deity withdraws and leaves the man at the crossroads – but the poet’s embrace of dissolution (in the world, in his mind) empowers his freedom. No wonder Hölderlin was Nietzsche’s favorite poet. From “The Poet’s Vocation”:

But if he must, the man remains fearless.
Alone before god, simplicity keeps him safe.
He needs no weapons and no cunning,
As long as God’s absence comes to his aid.

(From Ron Slate's website, On The Seawall, http://www.ronslate.com/selected_poems_friederich_h_lderlin_translated_maxine_chernoff_and_paul_hoover_omnidawn)

Disappear and re-appear from center of earth. The gods, withdrawing behind the clouds will re-appear from the center of the earth.

Where did you say that, Holderlin? Or was it Heidegger?

I'll watch.

Around; about

The words are true: What you see is what you get.

As we think so we live.

We mind reality.

Our thoughts create the world we live in.

This morning, for a brief awareness, I am, in surround, love.

Holy Now

When I was a boy, each week
On Sunday, we would go to church
And pay attention to the priest
He would read the holy word
And consecrate the holy bread
And everyone would kneel and bow
Today the only difference is
Everything is holy now
Everything, everything
Everything is holy now

When I was in Sunday school
We would learn about the time
Moses split the sea in two
Jesus made the water wine
And I remember feeling sad
That miracles don’t happen still
But now I can’t keep track
‘Cause everything’s a miracle
Everything, Everything
Everything’s a miracle

Wine from water is not so small
But an even better magic trick
Is that anything is here at all
So the challenging thing becomes
Not to look for miracles
But finding where there isn’t one

When holy water was rare at best
It barely wet my fingertips
But now I have to hold my breath
Like I’m swimming in a sea of it
It used to be a world half there
Heaven’s second rate hand-me-down
But I walk it with a reverent air
‘Cause everything is holy now
Everything, everything
Everything is holy now

Read a questioning child’s face
And say it’s not a testament
That’d be very hard to say
See another new morning come
And say it’s not a sacrament
I tell you that it can’t be done

This morning, outside I stood
And saw a little red-winged bird
Shining like a burning bush
Singing like a scripture verse
It made me want to bow my head
I remember when church let out
How things have changed since then
Everything is holy now
It used to be a world half-there
Heaven’s second rate hand-me-down
But I walk it with a reverent air
‘Cause everything is holy now

(Lyrics to Holy Now, by Peter Mayer)
(See video featuring song augmented by images by Christine Valters Paintner at http://abbeyofthearts.com/blog/2011/06/06/everything-is-holy-now/?utm_source=Abbey+of+the+Arts+List&utm_campaign=4b7594de2d-The+Sacred+Art+of+Living&utm_medium=email

Seeing without judging is the beginning of seeing things as they are.

Ease up on yourself, do simply and humbly what is there for us to do, and we will ease up on all our fellow beings, animate and inanimate, allowing each to be as they are for the duration as they, too, reflect, change, and grow.

Cutting Through Anger

Mental noting takes us in a very different direction from getting lost in a story: “Oh, this anger is so miserable; I am such a terrible person because I’m always angry; this is just how I will always be,” and so on. Instead, we simply say to ourselves, “anger, anger”—and cut through all of that elaboration, the story, the judgment, the interpretation.
- Sharon Salzberg and Joseph Goldstein, "Emotions and Hindrances"

This front room is chapel temple zendo mosque and oratory. It is every place I have been. It is what is outside the windows -- cedar tree chickadee squirrel and ice.

The Course in Miracles, always edging us to see things differently, offers today:

Lesson 037

My holiness blesses the world

This idea contains the first glimmerings of your true function in the world, or why you are here Your purpose is to see the world through your own holiness. Thus are you and the world blessed together. No one loses; nothing is taken away from anyone; everyone gains through your holy vision. It signifies the end of sacrifice because it offers everyone his full due. And he is entitled to everything because it is his birthright as a Son of God.
There is no other way in which the idea of sacrifice can be removed from the world's thinking Any other way of seeing will inevitably demand payment of someone or something. As a result, the perceiver will lose. Nor will he have any idea why he is losing. Yet is his wholeness restored to his awareness through your vision. Your holiness blesses him by asking nothing of him. Those who see themselves as whole make no demands.
Your holiness is the salvation of the world It lets you teach the world that it is one with you, not by preaching to it, not by telling it anything, but merely by your quiet recognition that in your holiness are all things blessed along with you.
Today's four longer exercise periods, each to involve three to five minutes of practice, begin with the repetition of the idea for today, followed by a minute or so of looking about you as you apply the idea to whatever you see:
My holiness blesses this chair
My holiness blesses that window
My holiness blesses this body
Then close your eyes and apply the idea to any person who occurs to you, using his name and saying:
My holiness blesses you, [name]
You may continue the practice period with your eyes closed; you may open your eyes again and apply the idea for today to your outer world if you so desire; you may alternate between applying the idea to what you see around you and to those who are in your thoughts; or you may use any combination of these two phases of application that you prefer The practice period should conclude with a repetition of the idea with your eyes closed, and another, following immediately, with your eyes open.
The shorter exercises consist of repeating the idea as often as you can It is particularly helpful to apply it silently to anyone you meet, using his name as you do so. It is essential to use the idea if anyone seems to cause an adverse reaction in you. Offer him the blessing of your holiness immediately, that you may learn to keep it in your own awareness.
http://www.themiracletimes.com/acim/lesson_text.php?l=37

Once we grow more comfortable with dissolving dualism and begin to see things non-dualistically, holiness is neither inside nor outside but holiness is itself what is. Inside and outside are only words attempting to locate. Holiness is homeless. It is what is.

Mendicants wander this homelessness and are correspondingly at home wherever they alight.

We are often called to leave the familiar mental home we've secured ourselves within to wander afield in trust and acceptance of holiness leading surrounding and deepening the reality we are, have been, and will come to be, world-without-end, amen!

And while that is happening, some hot oat bran, yesterday's reheated coffee, and cinnamon raisin English muffin will fortify the meander around who and what and where and how I am.

Sanctus! Shantih! See you around;about!

"bonae voluntatis" -- "of good will."

The exhortation is for peace on earth, for men and women of good will.

The Tabernacle

Hope fills me this morning as I fashion letters
into a tree that sighs, that stays put yet moves,
reaching to its limits, swaying and settling,
a compass pointing to its place on earth
where every morning it blocks the sun
for me, at work in my studio,
where I scratch and scrawl and loop
letters into shapes so I can enter the Tabernacle
of their bodies and hear each foot, each syllable
sending its roots to a depth as great as that tree’s,
which has been standing and rooting and swaying
long before I came to memorize its plain mystery,
its wide-bodied hull open to stars at night,
each a point that I lengthen into a letter
and each letter into a word, and with the words
build a Tabernacle for the ten most broken
and the ten most resonant words. I will place them
in an inner sanctum enclosed by hanging carpets,
and outside it, another space enclosed by carpets,
and outside it, another, so that those who wish
to read the words, to say them out loud,
must first pull one curtain back and step inside,
and then another, and another until they arrive
in a hushed space, a soundproofed, heavy quiet
where they come to know that which makes all things
                                     day after day,
and out of which the earth was made.
Stepping behind each curtain they learn
that the mystery of making is not a secret hidden within
but a series of moves, a sequence of steps,
outlined on a blueprint with notes and call-outs,
white on black, constellations in the night sky,
the primordial living Torah, circulating in the letters
as trees circulate light, capturing it with their leaves,
caching it within the soil, then drawing it back up,
watering the tallest branches with the radiant dark.

(Poem by Emily Warn, “The Tabernacle” from Shadow Architect. © 2008 by Emily Warn)

Is "good will" God's, or is it that of men and women?

Yes, it is!

The most secret, sacred wish that lies deep down at the bottom of your heart, the wonderful thing that you hardly dare to look at, or to think about —the thing that you would rather die than have anyone else know of, because it seems to be so far beyond anything that you are, or have at the present time, that you fear that you would be cruelly ridiculed if the mere thought of it were known — that is just the very thing, that God is wishing you to do or to be for Him.
And the birth of that marvelous wish in your soul —the dawning, of that secret dream— was the Voice of God Himself telling, you to arise and come up higher because He had need of you.
God is Infinite Mind, and that Mind is ever seeking for more and for new expression. "For such the Father seeketh to worship Him." Now, because you are a human being, you are intended to be a new point of expression for God —a focal point infinite Mind, in fact, somewhat as an electric lamp may be regarded as a focal point for the manifestation of the electric current in the circuit.
(--from, Your Heart’s Desire, by Emmet Fox) http://www.mysoulslippers.com/resources/Your%20Hearts%20Desire%20by%20Emmet%20Fox.pdf

If we practice good will, to friend and foe alike, are we happier, better off, than ill will?

Sir Thomas More: I do none harm, I say none harm, I think none harm. And if this be not enough to keep a man alive, in good faith I long not to live.
(--from, A Man for All Seasons, by Robert Bolt)

There's a different realm, a different world, to be lived in no matter whether dead or breathing. It is, as they say, a choice.

When the mind neither sorrows nor delights, that is supreme attainment of virtue. To succeed without changing is supreme attainment of calm. To be unburdened by habitual desires is supreme attainment of emptiness. To have no likes and dislikes is supreme attainment of equanimity. Not getting mixed up with things is supreme attainment of purity. Those who can accomplish these five things reach spiritual illuminations. Those who reach spiritual illumination are those who attain the inward.
- Huai-nan-tzu

There is only one way to peace on earth.

In terra pax hominibus bonae voluntatis.

So,

We

Pray!

What is wordless said

Bookshed readying for morning practice.

Yesterday at prison Tony, Ed, Chip, Brandon, and I chatted in room transformed into zendo waiting for Chris and Doris to arrive for Friday practice. We speak of love. Of God.

Tony brought it up, telling of crossing letters with dear friend on outside, both exploring the matter from two directions. In the conversation, like fledgling Tibetan monks hand-slapping in debate practice, or young Yiddish שול shul students pausing before stickball game to clarify a point, we have begun pre-practice. Something occurs that feels a new understanding of an old koan.

If God is love why is the fear of God beginning of wisdom?

Two methods enable us to rectify the heart:
The first is study,
Enriching our mind through practice
And discipline; training, studying
Until an inner light begins to grow within.
This seed of consiousness,
The sages teach, should be nourished
And kept in silence.
The second is the cultivation of virtue.
A sincere student discovers the
Workings of Tao by overcoming all
Manner of temptation.
Hordes of riches are outweighed in
Merit by a single word, Virtue.

- Loy Ching-yuen 1879-1960's)

We conclude this pre-practice wondering. It is a wonder to us that, in prison, aside from the Christian men's group at their monthly Kairos gatherings, nobody says to another "I love you!" (Agreement all around.) It is a frightening thing to hear or say -- and not only in prison. We are a little afraid of love.

But when we become aware that we are afraid of love we begin to notice what is there and what is not there. This noticing is the beginning of the path that points to wisdom.

If God is love, and I am a little afraid of love, I am a little afraid of God, afraid to love and be loved. Perhaps ignorance of this condition, or refusal even to acknowledge the possibility of behavior confused about this subtle equation, is the metaphoric prison surrounding so many of us.

May the light of your soul guide you

May the light of your soul guide you.
May the light of your soul bless the work
You do with the secret love and warmth of your heart.
May you see in what you do the beauty of your own soul.
May the sacredness of your work bring healing, light and renewal to those
Who work with you and to those who see and receive your work.
May your work never weary you.
May it release within you wellsprings of refreshment, inspiration and excitement.
May you be present in what you do.
May you never become lost in the bland absences.
May the day never burden you.
May dawn find you awake and alert, approaching your new day with dreams,
Possibilities and promises.
May evening find you gracious and fulfilled.
May you go into the night blessed, sheltered and protected.
May your soul calm, console and renew you.
(Poem by John O'Donohue, 1956 - 2008)

Chris and Doris arrive. We sit.

The morning is lighter.

A calming, consoling, renewing silence of awareness sits alongside.

Something pre-pronouncing has poised at origin of sighting words looking at nothing in particular merely accepting the sangha and loving the inward breath it's new choice recognizing what is wordless said.

"If the people you love are elsewhere"

In the dream it was everybody.

Unwilling to go back to former place I wish another visit. I round hill walking with man and woman to huge gathering space with enormous dwellings under expansion construction, a gracious woman welcoming in a gaggle of the gathered. I know I have been here, am welcome, but on waking cannot place who and where I was.

Purifying our self-direction,
Our emotions, and behavior in all endeavors,
One grows in understanding of the Way.
But individual abilities vary
And the exalted Way has many different aspects.
To students of Tao, this sincere forewarning:
Only with a clear, honest spirit
Can we begin meaningful learning.
With an unsullied heart
We may even move the immortals.
Debasing the Way,
Not even heaven forgives us.

- Loy Ching-yuen 1879-1960's)

I was welcome, That's what I remember.

Flying at Night

Above us, stars. Beneath us, constellations.
Five billion miles away, a galaxy dies
like a snowflake falling on water. Below us,
some farmer, feeling the chill of that distant death,
snaps on his yard light, drawing his sheds and barn
back into the little system of his care.
All night, the cities, like shimmering novas,
tug with bright streets at lonely lights like his.

(Poem by Ted Kooser)

There was joy.
I think it was
Everyone
And I was visiting
Again
On my way
Elsewhere, uncertainly

Returning from Farmington just in time for conversation last evening. Someone said they were sorry for the misunderstanding last week as I was playing messages. I said there was no misunderstanding. Another celebrated their 77th birthday with a 15 minute silent meditation sending what she could our way. I thought of the pile of dogshit on snowshoe path the big dog decided as right place and I had to move off to the hundreds of acres not chosen. Another person quietly enters during silence bringing ghost of her recently deceased sister through door without a sound. The circle, as always, calling its welcome with comforting familiarity.

He Foretells His Passing

I can imagine, years from now, your coming back
to this high, old, white house. "Home" I shouldn't say
because we can't predict who'll live here with a different
name.
How tall the birches will be then. Will you look up
from the road past the ash for light in the study windows
upstairs and down? Go climb the black maple as first
in new sneakers you walked forty feet in air
and saw the life to come. Don't forget the cats.

Because you grow away from a house, no matter how much you
come back,
if the people you love are elsewhere, or if the reason is,
say,
nostalgia, don't worry about small changes or lost names.
Sit down for a minute under the tallest birch. Look up
at the clouds reflected in the red barn's twisted window.
Lean on the wall. Hear our voices as at first
they shook the plaster, laughed, then burned in the dry air
like a wooden house. I imagine you won't forget the cats.

(Poem by F. D. Reeve, b.1928)

Wilber was right in his poem:
"We're seldom better than weather." (in "Villager")

It was a sunny walk to the site.

Remain with us; forever

We suffer, the Buddha said, because of craving, ignorance, and attachment.

Gain and renown are hindrances
To students of the Way;
They taint our purity of heart.
Uncentered, how can we comprehend Tao?
- Loy Ching-yuen ( 1879-1960's)

The kingdom of heaven, Jesus said, is open to the pure of heart.

Second reading Hebrews 2:14-18
Since all the children share the same blood and flesh, Christ too shared equally in it, so that by his death he could take away all the power of the devil, who had power over death, and set free all those who had been held in slavery all their lives by the fear of death. For it was not the angels that he took to himself; he took to himself descent from Abraham. It was essential that he should in this way become completely like his brothers so that he could be a compassionate and trustworthy high priest of God’s religion, able to atone for human sins. That is, because he has himself been through temptation he is able to help others who are tempted.
( Feast of the Presentation)

Jesus, it is said, was completely like us. We, similarly, are completely like Christ.

But we crave Christ for ourselves, are ignorant of the true nature of Christ-reality, and are attached to the forms of religiosity and ritual pronouncements presented by our society and culture.

A Sort of a Song 

Let the snake wait under 

his weed 

and the writing 

be of words, slow and quick, sharp 

to strike, quiet to wait, 

sleepless. 

-- through metaphor to reconcile 

the people and the stones. 

Compose. (No ideas 

but in things) Invent! 

Saxifrage is my flower that splits 

the rocks 

(Poem by William Carlos Williams, 1883-1963)

Words break rocks as silence shapes water -- attend reality itself without concepts or opinion.

Truth, the zen master said, is easy to arrive at -- just drop all your opinions.

Truth is what is remaining.

I pray for our remains.

At this very moment

Haiku

Restive, rolling wheel
Recollection every place
I've been, now here, gone

(wfh/nunc ipsum)

This single morning is enough

River between US and Canada inky on evening walk along iced path rutted with snowmobile tracks. Cold wind. This morning temperature is -2 degrees fahrenheit here in Calais Maine.

 

The human body is a little universe Its chill tears, so much wind-blown sleet
Beneath our skins, mountains bulge, brooks flow
Within our chests lurk lost cities, hidden tribes

Wisdom quarters itself in our tiny hearts
Liver and gall peer out, scrutinize a thousand miles
Follow a path back to its source, else be
A house vacant save for swallows in the eaves
- Shih-shu (17tt-early 18th c)

This body has been kind. It walks in freezing temperature, sleeps near snoring dogs, acknowledges passing beings, shares footlong tuna sandwich loaded with pickles, black olives, lettuce and peppers, drives through snow squalls over slippery soft new fallen flakes, reads The Dhammapada for two hours in front seat of green Element making pencil notations in margins, and allows itself to be breathed in and out by the atmosphere surrounding this planet Earth with humble surrender and acceptance of the comings and goings.

8. The Thousands

Better than a thousand pointless words is one saying to the point on hearing which one finds peace. 100

Better than a thousand pointless verses is one stanza on hearing which one finds peace. 101

Better than reciting a hundred pointless verses is one verse of the teaching (one dhammapada) on hearing which one finds peace. 102

Though one were to defeat thousands upon thousands of men in battle, if another were to overcome just one -- himself, he is the supreme victor. 103

Victory over oneself is better than that over others. When a man has conquered himself and always acts with self-control, neither devas, spirits, Mara or Brahma can reverse the victory of a man like that. 104, 105

Though one were to perform sacrifices by the thousand month after month for a hundred years, if another were to pay homage to a single inwardly perfected man for just a moment, that homage is better than the hundred years of sacrifices. 106

Though one were to tend the sacrificial fire for a hundred years in the forest, if another were to pay homage to a single inwardly perfected man for just a moment, that homage is better than the hundred years of sacrifice. 107

All the sacrifices and offerings a man desiring merit could make in a year in the world are not worth a quarter of the better merit of homage to the righteous. 108

Four principal things increase in the man who is respectful and always honours his elders -- length of life, good looks, happiness and health. 109

Though one were to live a hundred years immoral and with a mind unstilled by meditation, the life of a single day is better if one is moral and practises meditation. 110

Though one were to live a hundred years without wisdom and with a mind unstilled by meditation, the life of a single day is better if one is wise and practises meditation. 111

Though one were to live a hundred years without seeing the rise and passing of things, the life of a single day is better if one sees the rise and passing of things. 113

Though one were to live a hundred years without seeing the deathless state, the life of a single day is better if one sees the deathless state. 114

Though one were to live a hundred years without seeing the supreme truth, the life of a single day is better if one sees the supreme truth. 115
(--from, The Dhammapada, Gautama Buddha / Translated by John Richards,
http://eawc.evansville.edu/anthology/dhammapada.htm)

This single morning is enough.

Red pickup neighbor's truck starts engine. Dogs, mirabile dictu, do not bark.

Soon, Sorel boots with orange ice-grippers, peat canvas vest, green hooded anorak, brown scarf, charcoal wool watch cap, blue flannel lined jeans, thick grey sox, walking sticks, black gloves, sunglasses and a willingness to be breathed by sub-zero air and it is time to walk the river path with three companions.

Inshallah, to return and continue the day, the reading, the companionship, the driving, with coffee and liberty for all.

No sacrificial fire; just warm air blowing half to feet half to windshield ready for afternoon's predicted snowfall heading home.

Relenting; re-centering recent erring of the cosmos

When I take a spoonful of soup into my mouth I am doing it for the hungry child in Somalia. I am nourishing the death row inmate sitting at last meal before execution. I am tasting the bittersweet realization that as one body, if mindfully aware, everyone is sipping soup, even those starving and about to die. It is not about keeping everybody alive -- that is not possible. It is about going beyond the barrier of death-ridden ignorance to the realization no one is separate, no one left out of the core of care, the center of being, the engagement with one-another which is the very nature of in-der-Welt-sein

Recapitulation. An act or instance of summarizing or restating the main points of something.

What are the main points of being alive, being here, of there being anything at all instead of nothing?

Being-in-the-World
(German: In-der-Welt-sein)
Being-in-the-world is Heidegger's replacement for terms such as subject, object, consciousness, and world. For him, the split of things into subject/object, as we find in the Western tradition and even in our language, must be overcome, as is indicated by the root structure of Husserl and Brentano's concept of intentionality, i.e., that all consciousness is consciousness of something, that there is no consciousness, as such, cut off from an object (be it the matter of a thought, or of a perception). Nor are there objects without some consciousness beholding or being involved with them.
At the most basic level of being-in-the-world, Heidegger notes that there is always a mood, a mood that "assails us" in our unreflecting devotion to the world. A mood comes neither from the "outside" nor from the "inside," but arises from being-in-the-world. One may turn away from a mood, but that is only to another mood; it is part of our facticity. Only with a mood are we permitted to encounter things in the world. Dasein (a co-term for being-in-the-world) has an openness to the world that is constituted by the attunement of a mood or state of mind. As such, Dasein is a "thrown" "projection," projecting itself onto the possibilities that lie before it or may be hidden, and interpreting and understanding the world in terms of possibilities. Such projecting has nothing to do with comporting oneself toward a plan that has been thought out. It is not a plan, since Dasein has, as Dasein, already projected itself. Dasein always understands itself in terms of possibilities. As projecting, the understanding of Dasein is its possibilities as possibilities. One can take up the possibilities of "The They" self and merely follow along or make some more authentic understanding. (See Hubert Dreyfus' book -"Being-in-the-World") (Wikipedia, Heideggerian terminology) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heideggerian_terminology#Aletheia

We are alone in the world. (Does that sound stark?) How about: We are all one in the world? (Does that sound frightening?)

My sorrow might not be 'my' sorrow. My joy not 'mine.' And my life? Whose 'life' is it?

How is it possible that I am dense enough or clever enough to manufacture a belief that I am separate or separated from the whole of everything that is in the world? What refined illusion do I hang on my wall as a mirror so that when I look into it I see the image of a disconnected entity on his own, for himself, less than/more than everything/everyone else, an isolated ideology of miraculous living at a distance from what-is?

How odd!

Tellhard de Chardin was convinced that the total material universe is in movement toward a greater unified convergence in consciousness, a hyper-personalized organism. He conceived of the universe as a vast transhuman body in the process of formation, held together by the Omega point, "a distinct Centre radiating at the core of a system of centers." Because of Christ, Teilhard indicated, we live in "an irreversible personalizing universe." Teilhard spoke of the organic nature of Christ as the total Christ whose activity consists in "recapitulation," or bringing the universe to its ultimate center through the transforming energies of the resurrection. Christ is the physical center of an expanding universe. By "physical" Teilhard meant ontological reality. Christ is the real personal center of the universe.
(--p.156, in, Christ in Evolution, by Ilia Delio, O.S.F., c.2008, Orbis)

With meditation and contemplation we begin to drop off the moments, years, decades, millennia misunderstanding of existence. The misunderstanding is understandable. We look as if from outside at the outside of everything, measuring distance and threat, dimension and tactical approach for small-self-interests. Food, shelter, clothing, the means to attain these, perpetuate them, the ability to protect them, who to mistrust, who might invade our storehouse, take our imagined future, defile our pure idea of eternal life, separate us from our separative thinking.

As flowing waters disappear into the mist
We lose all track of their passage
Every heart is its own Buddha
Ease off; become immortal

Wake up: the world's a mote of dust
Behold heaven's round mirror
Turn loose: slip past shape and shadow
Sit side by side with nothing save Tao

- Shih-shu (17th - early 18th c)

White Border Collie stares at me. The red geodesic ball is at side of bed on rug. He is flummoxed that I am not throwing it across room for the 15th time. That I am looking at a stupid square making clickink sounds while there is a perfectly good activity throw and fetch at hand. He doesn't think these humanoids hold much promise.

Sri Aurobindo's teaching states that this One Being and Consciousness is involved here in Matter. Evolution is the method by which it liberates itself; consciousness appears in what seems to be inconscient, and once having appeared is self-impelled to grow higher and higher and at the same time to enlarge and develop towards a greater and greater perfection. Life is the first step of this release of consciousness; mind is the second; but the evolution does not finish with mind, it awaits a release into something greater, a consciousness which is spiritual and supramental. The next step of the evolution must be towards the development of Supermind and Spirit as the dominant power in the conscious being. For only then will the involved Divinity in things release itself entirely and it become possible for life to manifest perfection. (--from, Sri Aurobindo's teaching and method of sadhana. -- Sri Aurobindo on himself)
http://www.auroville.org/vision/sriauroteaching.htm

Rokpa makes quiet sounds, then more audible soft barks, poised on rug next to rocking chair, tail swooshing, eyes darting from red sphere to my being here.

He grows tired of my obtuse nescience.

I relent.

I lean over.

Pick up the whole earth, whole cosmos, round ball.

I throw it.

Outwandering; mendicant, empty handed

5.3km row out and around bell buoy and Curtis Island greeted by Harbor Seal glinting wet sunshine watching me in mutual solitude as I place coin on bobbing monastery-church-of-the-sea bell tower for travellors seen or unseen. I imagine two bits will fetch a couple of coffees or something stronger in the world-beyond-world of mythic maritime lore.

A Life of Deep Awareness
The secret of beginning a life of deep awareness and sensitivity lies in our
willingness to pay attention. Our growth as conscious, awake human beings is
marked not so much by grand gestures and visible renunciations as by extending
loving attention to the minutest particulars of our lives. Every relationship,
every thought, every gesture is blessed with meaning through the wholehearted
attention we bring to it. In the complexities of our minds and lives we easily
forget the power of attention, yet without attention we live only on the surface
of existence. It is just simple attention that allows us truly to listen to the
song of a bird, to see deeply the glory of an autumn leaf, to touch the heart of
another and be touched. We need to be fully present in order to love a single
thing wholeheartedly. We need to be fully awake in this moment if we are to
receive and respond to the learning inherent in it.

~Christina Feldman and Jack Kornfield,
Stories of the Spirit, Stories of the Heart

To be able to cavort with wind and swell, tide and sunlight, fish and fowl, memory and imagination in quiet cloistered solitude originates gratefulness while pulling oars move meter by meter over muted depths of alterity.

Otherness calls for awe and attention. It has to be contemplated with care. During which, in an unattended instant, it disappears and you are left alone.

In all ten directions of the universe,
there is only one truth.
When we see clearly, the great teachings are the same.
What can ever be lost? What can be attained?
If we attain something, it was there from the beginning of time.
If we lose something, it is hiding somewhere near us.
Look: this ball in my pocket:
can you see how priceless it is?
--Ryokan ( (1758-1831)

What stirs in barn to set Border Collie barking a second time this middle of night? He doesn't understand my dullness of senses. He comes to front room to sleep on white couch. Everyone else in household returns to bed. Sump pump moves water to Barnestown Road. Furnace takes its turn. Good laborers! Serving the temporary needs of the house and bodies.

The fool thinks, "I am the body"; the intelligent man thinks,
"I am an individual soul united with the body." But the wise
man, in the greatness of his knowledge and spiritual discrimination,
sees the Self as the only reality and thinks, "I am Brahman."
--Shankara(b.788)

It's not difficult becoming a fool. I've accredited it without much thought. I've been recognized by both peers and strangers alike for my decomplishment.

Acquainted with the Night

I have been one acquainted with the night.
I have walked out in rain -- and back in rain.
I have outwalked the furthest city light.

I have looked down the saddest city lane.
I have passed by the watchman on his beat
And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.

I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet
When far away an interrupted cry
Came over houses from another street,

But not to call me back or say good-bye;
And further still at an unearthly height,
O luminary clock against the sky

Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right.
I have been one acquainted with the night.
(--Poem by Robert Frost)

There's no one in the barn.

There's no one in this room.

Nor, videlicet, could anyone remain reading this.

Look at what is left alone!

Establish no; religion

When Christopher Hitchens died where was God? When little girls go missing, long searches turning up nothing, until one afternoon, a passerby, sees something out of place, unusual, in wooded patch. When a man sits down to dinner with new friend, dabs lips as waitress asks about dessert, looks at companion, smiles, furrows brow, collapses, dies. When teenage boy feels mocking bullying is more than he can stand, can think of no way to ease out of the humiliating pressure of unrelenting belittling, tightens rope, let's fall body, ends breath.

Ryonen:
When Ryonen was about to pass from this
world, she wrote another poem:

Sixty-six times have these eyes beheld the
changing scene of autumn.
I have said enough about moonlight,
Ask no more.
Only listen to the voice of pines and cedars
when no wind stirs.
(--Zen Death Poem)

I ask no more of God. It no longer matters whether someone says they believe in God or another says there is no God. A theist and atheist walk into a barrier. The theist is glad to meet God. The atheist walks around it.

At 4:44 this morning the question arrived: what's the difference between alertness and fear? Someone was saying yesterday that animals live in constant alertness for danger and threat. Similarly, the prevailing method of controlling the behavior of humans is to encourage them to be afraid. Fear, not love, keeps order.

To see clearly or think clearly is to be alert.
To be anxious about the outcome, an unpleasant emotion caused by the belief that something is dangerous or threatening to well-being, is fear.

When a man knows God

"When a man knows God, he is free: his sorrows have an end,
and birth and death are no more. When in inner union he is
beyond the world of the body, then the third world, the world
of the Spirit, is found, where the power of the All is, and man
has all: for he is one with the ONE."
From: Svetasvatara Upanishad

When "no" is established, religion forms as fear arises.

Nor is it necessarily to be thought that "yes" originates an alert response to what reveals itself to us. Yes is open acknowledgement that what is there is what is there. Nothing more.

Can we love what is there? Can we live without fear?

Is Hitchen's clarity about the perversity of belief, the sorrow of family at child's remains, the shock of companion's sudden collapse, the still body of teenage boy -- are these things even dared spoken about in the context of alertness or fear?

Alert sorrow (or joy), yes; dread fear (or cowering reverence), no.

I prefer my yes or no to be yes and no. Not an absolute stand sealed in cement, but a step along a path then another step moving forward as moving is called for.

No religion need establish itself. "Itself" is disorganized, fluid, free, and always unique when it appears-- or when it remains hidden from our eyes. Still, there is only "Itself."

Only Itself is, Nothing Else is.

What, I wonder, is there to fear?

A Parable of Immortality

I am standing upon the seashore.
A ship at my side spreads her white sails to the morning breeze
and starts for the blue ocean.

She is an object of beauty and strength,
and I stand and watch until at last she hangs
like a speck of white cloud
just where the sea and sky come down to mingle with each other.
Then someone at my side says,
" There she goes! "

Gone where?

Gone from my sight . . . that is all.

She is just as large in mast and hull and spar
as she was when she left my side
and just as able to bear her load of living freight
to the place of destination.

Her diminished size is in me, not in her.

And just at the moment
when someone at my side says,
" There she goes! "
there are other eyes watching her coming . . .
and other voices ready to take up the glad shout . . .

" Here she comes! "

~Henry Van Dyke

The name the Buddha used to refer to himself in scriptures is Tathagata. It means: "one who has thus gone, one who has thus come." It sounds paradoxical. It probably means one is beyond coming or going, one seeing truth.

Perhaps ours isn't to establish truth. Perhaps there is a humbler task, namely, to see what is there as it is there so shall it be there as it moves beyond to where it will next be seen.

We'd have to learn how to dwell for a while in a run-on sentence.

Like...life.

Remember, watch your steps

God, it is said, is love.

Has anyone ever seen God?

Her written words were the expression of her lived, personalized experience of poverty: "Have confidence and strong faith that God will assist you in everything." And, she counsels her followers: "You must be convinced that God will never fail to provide for all your needs, material and spiritual alike... They will never be abandoned in their needs."
(--from website of Ursuline Sisters of Cincinnati, about St. Angela Merici, 1770@-1802)

We do not see our eye. The eye sees for us. God is that eye. No one sees God. We see what God sees. We are God's eye. Seeing the world is our vision. Whatever happens in the world we can choose to see things with the mind of God seeing things, as we say, differently, that is, carrying away with love whatever is however it is presented.

As Kali said in circle last evening, "I feel I am being present." Yes, sheer gift. Seen through. God's love.

The path to Han-shan's place is laughable,
A path, but no sign of cart or horse.
Converging gorges - hard to trace their twists
Jumbled cliffs - unbelievably rugged.
A thousand grasses bend with dew,
A hill of pines hums in the wind.
And now I've lost the shortcut home,
Body asking shadow, how do you keep up?
(--from THE COLD MOUNTAIN POEMS of Han Shan, tr. Gary Snyder)

Walking the grounds of the Dorothea Dix Psychiatric Center in Bangor yesterday talking with someone slowly preparing to leave to return home, we are accompanied by all our shadows. They manage to keep up. There are simple words and encouraging that speak us over patches of ice on hard ground weaving through open field.

It's not simply that God is love. It's that we are what God is looking through seeing love.

So maybe the question isn't, "Have you ever seen God?" -- but rather, "Am I seeing what God is seeing?"

Rosie wondered if God even knows we're here -- which is a terrific wonder.

Presence doesn't make of itself something other than itself. It is itself seeing itself as no other nor anything else as other. Not separate. Not object. Not somewhere else.

Our need is to be what is seeing along the laughably rugged path to the hermit poet's place, the place we are never abandoned never failing to make our way with a different way of seeing.

God's way, body and shadow, keeping up.

Seeing nothing but what is there with love.

No longer looked for; present

I don't wish to tell students about East Asian Philosophy; I'd like us to experience it.

So, we spend time with May Sarton last night.

Now I Become Myself

Now I become myself. It's taken 
Time, many years and places;
I have been dissolved and shaken,
Worn other people's faces,
Run madly, as if Time were there,
Terribly old, crying a warning,
"Hurry, you will be dead before--"
(What? Before you reach the morning?
Or the end of the poem is clear?
Or love safe in the walled city?)
Now to stand still, to be here,
Feel my own weight and density!
The black shadow on the paper
Is my hand; the shadow of a word
As thought shapes the shaper
Falls heavy on the page, is heard.
All fuses now, falls into place
From wish to action, word to silence,
My work, my love, my time, my face
Gathered into one intense
Gesture of growing like a plant.
As slowly as the ripening fruit
Fertile, detached, and always spent,
Falls but does not exhaust the root,
So all the poem is, can give,
Grows in me to become the song,
Made so and rooted by love.
Now there is time and Time is young.
O, in this single hour I live
All of myself and do not move.
I, the pursued, who madly ran,
Stand still, stand still, and stop the sun!
.
    (Poem by May Sarton)

The movement from here to here, from subject/object to subjectless object and objectless subject, from me and you to (oh my word!) You! -- is as arduous as allowing breath to be felt, seen, breathed without a breather.

In other words, there are no other words.

The sun no longer moves. You no longer move.

The sun is the tree -- deep within with no without -- astronomical immensity in a single dendrochronical sliver rounding itself as itself in its instant of becoming itself.

All so vague:
The reasons why in autumn
All fade away
And there's just this
Inexplicable sadness.
- Saigyo (1118-1190)

Gifts are presents.

You can't give someone an experience. You can only present it.

You can moment it.

In the present.

Hence: Gifts are presents.

Occupy the present!

Be the moment!

Gift yourself!

As light.

Mary Oliver's first line in her poem "The Buddha's Last Instruction" is:
"Make of yourself a light".

The Buddha's Last Instruction
 .
"Make of yourself a light,"
said the Buddha,
before he died.
I think of this every morning
as the east begins
to tear off its many clouds
of darkness, to send up the first
signal--a white fan
streaked with pink and violet,
even green.
An old man, he lay down
between two sala trees,
and he might have said anything,
knowing it was his final hour.
The light burns upward,
it thickens and settles over the fields.
Around him, the villagers gathered
and stretched forward to listen.
Even before the sun itself
hangs, disattached, in the blue air,
I am touched everywhere
by its ocean of yellow waves.
No doubt he thought of everything
that had happened in his difficult life.
And then I feel the sun itself
as it blazes over the hills,
like a million flowers on fire--
clearly I'm not needed,
yet I feel myself turning
into something of inexplicable value.
Slowly, beneath the branches,
He raised his head.
He looked into the faces of that frightened crowd.
.
(Poem by Mary Oliver)

What we love about poetry is what we love within the experience of poetry -- namely, the present it gifts.

Bringing our frightened faces right here, inexplicably sad when sad, inextricably amazed when amazed.

That which is looked for, in the looking, no longer looked for.

Not needed.

Value valued valuing!

Looking itself.

Quarrels cease at once.

What do you think?

DHAMMAPADA.

CHAPTER I.

THE TWIN-VERSES.

   1. All that we are is the result of what we have thought: it is founded on our thoughts, it is made up of our thoughts. If a man speaks or acts with an evil thought, pain follows him, as the wheel follows the foot of the ox that draws the carriage.

   2. All that we are is the result of what we have thought: it is founded on our thoughts, it is made up of our thoughts. If a man speaks or acts with a pure thought, happiness follows him, like a shadow that never leaves him.

   3. 'He abused me, he beat me, he defeated me, he robbed me,'--in those who harbour such thoughts hatred will never cease.

   4. 'He abused me, he beat me, he defeated me, he robbed me,'--in those who do not harbour such thoughts hatred will cease.

   5. For hatred does not cease by hatred at any time: hatred ceases by love, this is an old rule.

   6. The world does not know that we must all come to an end here;--but those who know it, their quarrels cease at once.

   7. He who lives looking for pleasures only, his senses uncontrolled, immoderate in his food, idle, and weak, Mâra (the tempter) will certainly overthrow him, as the wind throws down a weak tree.

   8. He who lives without looking for pleasures, his senses well controlled, moderate in his food, faithful and strong, him Mâra will certainly not overthrow, any more than the wind throws down a rocky mountain.
http://www.sacred-texts.com/bud/sbe10/sbe1003.htm

Because what we think is the world for us.

There's a story in one of the Buddhist scriptures about a king who, in a state of acute depression took a drive one day through a park filled with huge tropical trees. He dismounted from his carriage and walked among their great roots, which were themselves as tall as an ordinary man, and noticed the way that they "inspired trust and confidence." "They were quiet; no discordant voices disturbed their peace; they gave out a sense of being apart from the ordinary world, a place where one could take refuge from people" and find a retreat from the cruelties of life. Looking at those wonderful old trees, the king was reminded immediately of the Buddha, jumped into his carriage and drove for miles until he reached the house where the Buddha was staying.[3]

In the Buddha, the king found the same thing he found in the stand of great trees: peace, quiet, serenity, refuge. This is what the Buddha was like: a stand of great, old trees. Metaphors like this work better to describe him than the usual array of words we use to describe humans. Rather than calling him wise or insightful or revolutionary, we say he was like a stand of old trees.
http://www.fvuuf.org/index2.php?option=com_docman&task=doc_view&gid=233&Itemid=208

I think a stand of old trees is a good place for a good story.

What do you think?

Yes; learning to read

Mystics see whole what we only partially suspect. It must be disconcerting.

The nearest way to God
Leads through love's open door;
The path of knowledge is
Too slow for evermore. (Angelus Silesius)

It is 46degrees and raining. Odd weather, January. From zero to 46, from crystal scrunch underfoot to foggy mist surrounding tree.

God never did exist
Nor ever will, yet aye
He was ere worlds began, and
When they're gone he'll stay. (AS)

On treadmill and rowing machine some mornings the paces of rehabilitation prepare one for healthier days as well as day's end. It is good effort, staying alive. It is good prayer, saying goodbye to what is going nowhere. Blood pressure and finger pulse, monitors and stretching, I join the small community of those reminded that to look back or look ahead are two confusing directions -- that being in place, actively going nowhere, is the curious momentum of each moment.

ANGELUS SILESIUS

by Paul Carus

THE OPEN COURT

A MONTHLY MAGAZINE

Devoted to the Science of Religion, the Religion of Science, and the Extension of the Religious Parliament Idea.

Volume XXII

CHICAGO

THE OPEN COURT PUBLISHING COMPANY

1908

{Reduced to HTML by Christopher M. Weimer, August 2002}

p. 291

ANGELUS SILESIUS.

BY THE EDITOR.

   MYSTICISM is, as it were, a short cut of sentiment to reach a truth otherwise inaccessible under given conditions, and since writing an article on the subject for a recent number of The Monist, I have devoted more time to a renewed perusal of one of the most prominent and interesting mystics of Germany, Johannes Scheffler, or as he is better known by his adopted name, Angelus Silesius, who was born in 1624 at Breslau, and died in 1677. While mystics of the type of Jacob Boehme and Swedenborg present their views in long essays of a philosophical nature which read like the dreams (or if you prefer, the vagaries) of a prophet, Angelus Silesius condenses his views in short apothegms, written in a somewhat archaic style, mostly in simple verse, and often with crude rhymes.

   For an explanation of my view of mysticism, I refer my readers to the above-mentioned editorial article published in The Monist of January, 1908, pages 75-110. I have there attempted to translate of the lines of Angelus Silesius (on pages 104-109). Since this mystical thinker is little known in the countries of English speech, and since only a few of his verses have been translated, we present here to our readers an additional selection which will serve as instances of the peculiar God-conception of the mystics, so much like Buddhistic Nirvana; also the mystic ethics of quietism, the mystic psychology and mystic religion which teach man to seek salvation through breaking down the limits of the ego. By overcoming egoity it is promised that man shall attain divinity. Peculiarly noteworthy is the mystic's sensual conception of piety, and the representation of the soul's relation to God as a kind of mystic marriage. All this is typical of a certain kind of mysticism which exercised such a powerful influence at the end of the Middle Ages, but has now entirely lost its influence on mankind. http://www.sacred-texts.com/journals/oc/pc-as.htm

Ruffage, nuts, odd seeds in system, pink pills and oval pills, various shades of bluegreen pills, gurgling plumbing, laboring furnace, cooling wood stove, snoring dog, industrious mice, defiant squirrels, rolling cars passing in dark, unfathomable galaxies and universes out and about, rocksalt in crevices of peapod floorboards, creaking ceiling as occupant turns in bed, coughs, and gauges how much time remains to sleep.

What you for others wish,
You for yourself suggest.
If you don't wish them well,
Your own death you request.

A soul redeemed and blessed
No more knows otherhood.
It is with God one light
And one beatitude.

In Heaven life is good:
No-one has aught alone.
What one possesses, there
All others too will own.(AS)

It is humorous to consider most of our proprietary gathering unto ourselves here in the little-seeing world has been silly-stalking senselessness in the bemused eyes of infinite simplicity-sallying spirituality of the naught alone.

"Where is my residence?"'
Where I nor you can stand.
"Where is the final end
Where I at last shall land?"
'T is where no end is found.
"And whither must I press.
Above God I must pass.
Into the wilderness.(AS)

Morning begins arising light. Everywhere in town feet meet floor. Mind adjusts to flood of tasks. We are lucky to love what is here!

Friend it is now enough.
In case thou more wilt read:
Thou must the Scriptures be,
The essence eke, indeed. (AS)

Lucky to be learning to read.

Open the sack; look for hat

We row lighthouse keeper to Curtis Island. She needed to pick up some things for an upcoming trip. Smooth and calm waters, sunlight steady, skim ice covering inner harbor. On return from island we pass Sam and Susan rowing out. Susan was reciting soundly something about Spain and water sovereignty across our bow as they diminished steadily to a green dot on a distant fading tack. Mean temperature was 14degrees. Back at house, after walking with dogs around turtle islands on frozen Hosmer Pond, the thermometer said 7degrees. Sitting zazen in Merton Retreat the small gas fireplace tried its best to push back seeping cold. Chicken soup, hot, hale, and hearty, helped afterwards.

If you want to catch a rat
You don't need a fancy cat
If you want to learn the principles
Don't study fine bound books
The True Pearl's in a hemp sack
The Buddha nature rests in huts
Many grasp the sack
But few open it.
- Shih-te

Primary season scurries in and out of dark nests bringing pesty ideas into light of day best left in walls and crevices out of sight of pandering politicos dripping money from overripe financiers testing the traps of democracy with pungent cheese of plutocratic oligarchy. Or, as the fisherman on the dock might say: Rotten bait is only good for soon dead fish. And there's something fishy these days about the wharves of congress and supreme court and even the executive launch. With global warming and stinking pails of potash fertilizing money stuffed in ambitious gills it is no surprise the oxygen levels necessary to sustain life under and above water are diminishing. Sucking any sustaining nourishment out of weakening bodies, corruptive venture entrepreneurs prop up facsimile figures to postulate and gesticulate guppy mouthing of stale and rotting ideas that do not bode well for healthy civic and spiritual life. The political fishing grounds are badly and sadly polluted.

Gregory Corso stepped out of his attic to give us the following:

America Politica Historia, In Spontaneity

O this political air so heavy with the bells
and motors of a slow night, and no place to rest
but rain to walk—How it rings the Washington streets!
The umbrella’d congressmen; the rapping tires
of big black cars, the shoulders of lobbyists
caught under canopies and in doorways,
and it rains, it will not let up,
and meanwhile lame futurists weep into Spengler’s
prophecy, will the world be over before the races blend color?
All color must be one or let the world be done—
There’ll be a chance, we’ll all be orange!
I don’t want to be orange!
Nothing about God’s color to complain;
and there is a beauty in yellow, the old Lama
in his robe the color of Cathay;
in black a strong & vital beauty,
Thelonious Monk in his robe of Norman charcoal—
And if Western Civilization comes to an end
(though I doubt it, for the prophet has not
executed his prophecy) surely the Eastern child
will sit by a window, and wonder
the old statues, the ornamented doors;
the decorated banquet of the West—
Inflamed by futurists I too weep in rain at night
at the midnight of Western Civilization;
Dante’s step into Hell will never be forgotten by Hell;
the Gods’ adoption of Homer will never be forgotten by the Gods;
the books of France are on God’s bookshelf;
no civil war will take place on the fields of God;
and I don’t doubt the egg of the East its glory—
Yet it rains and the motors go
and continued when I slept by that wall in Washington
which separated the motors in the death-parlor
where Joe McCarthy lay, lean and stilled,
ten blocks from the Capitol—
I could never understand Uncle Sam
his red & white striped pants his funny whiskers his starry hat:
how surreal Yankee Doodle Dandy, goof!
American history has a way of making you feel
George Washington is still around, that is
when I think of Washington I do not think of Death—
Of all Presidents I have been under
Hoover is the most unreal
and FDR is the most President-looking
and Truman the most Jewish-looking
and Eisenhower the miscast of Time into Space—
Hoover is another America, Mr. 1930
and what must he be thinking now?
FDR was my youth, and how strange to still see
his wife around.
Truman is still in Presidential time.
I saw Eisenhower helicopter over Athens
and he looked at the Acropolis like only Zeus could.
OF THE PEOPLE is fortunate and select.
FOR THE PEOPLE has never happened in America or elsewhere.
BY THE PEOPLE is the sadness of America.
I am not politic.
I am not patriotic.
I am nationalistic!
I boast well the beauty of America to all the people in Europe.
In me they do not see their vision of America.
O whenever I pass an American Embassy I don’t know what to feel!
Sometimes I want to rush in and scream: “I’m American!”
but instead go a few paces down to the American Bar
get drunk and cry: “I’m no American!”
The men of politics I love are but youth’s fantasy:
The fine profile of Washington on coins stamps & tobacco wraps
The handsomeness and death-in-the-snow of Hamilton.
The eyeglasses shoe-buckles kites & keys of Ben Franklin.
The sweet melancholy of Lincoln.
The way I see Christ, as something romantic & unreal, is the way I see them.
An American is unique among peoples.
He looks and acts like a boyman.
He never looks cruel in uniform.
He is rednecked portly rich and jolly.
White-haired serious Harvard, kind and wry.
A convention man a family man a rotary man & practical joker.
He is moonfaced cunning well-meaning & righteously mean.
He is Madison Avenue, handsome, in-the-know, and superstitious.
He is odd, happy, quicker than light, shameless, and heroic
Great yawn of youth!
The young don’t seem interested in politics anymore.
Politics has lost its romance!
The “bloody kitchen” has drowned!
And all that is left are those granite
façades of Pentagon, Justice, and Department—
Politicians do not know youth!
They depend on the old
and the old depend on them
and lo! this has given youth a chance
to think of heaven in their independence.
No need to give them liberty or freedom
where they’re at—
When Stevenson in 1956 came to San Francisco
he campaigned in what he thought was an Italian section!
He spoke of Italy and Joe DiMaggio and spaghetti,
but all who were there, all for him,
were young beatniks! and when his car drove off
Ginsberg & I ran up to him and yelled:
“When are you going to free the poets from their attics!”
Great yawn of youth!
Mad beautiful oldyoung America has no candidate
the craziest wildest greatest country of them all!
and not one candidate—
Nixon arrives ever so temporal, self-made,
frontways sideways and backways,
could he be America’s against? Detour to vehicle?
Mast to wind? Shore to sea? Death to life?
The last President?

(Poem by Gregory Corso, “America Politica Historia, in Spontaneity” from Elegiac Feelings American. Copyright © 1970 by Gregory Corso.)
Source: Mindfield: New and Selected Poems (New Directions Publishing Corporation, 1989)

No poets need apply this election year. Poets shape metaphor and seedling word, politicians mold fear and into needling absurd, smiling thousand dollar smiles, tossing pennies at paupers.

I'd rather row a lighthouse keeper telling stories on stern thwart to Tanzania to help with medical healing than listen to one more sorrowful syllable from rue-ling class Lotharios breaking hearts and hopes with magnificent cons and swindles paid for by elect-my-mouthpiece.org.

Enough, this Monday morning rant.

I look outside.

A cold rain starting

A cold rain starting
And no hat --
So?

(poem by Matsuo Basho)

The stark sanity of poetry!

Balm to current craze and personal maze madness!

At origin of all: that; is

Ha! Ha! Here! Ha! Ha!

I've got plenty of nothing here.

Sometimes it gets me down. For so long I've been elsewhere, there, mistaken. It is a relief to be turning a corner, bumping into here as though a mistake, a wrong navigation; and dangerous, each turning is, disconcerting.

Sermons there are, must be a million
Too many to read in a hurry
If you want a friend
Just come to T'ien T'ai mountain
Sit deep among the crags
We'll talk about the Principles
And chat about dark Mysteries
If you don't come to my mountain
Your view will be blocked
By the others.
- Shih-te

Snowshoeing Hosmer Pond with Saskia, Cody, and Rokie in light falling flakes we realize again the joy of being in this gift of mountain, pond, sky, and cold. Around edges thick with ice the steady lift and thump of wide attachments to winter boots create new paths through recent snow. There's nothing like it. Naturally, we love it as it is, here, for now.

Second reading 1 Corinthians 7:29-31
Brothers [and Sisters]: our time is growing short. Those who have wives should live as though they had none, and those who mourn should live as though they had nothing to mourn for; those who are enjoying life should live as though there were nothing to laugh about; those whose life is buying things should live as though they had nothing of their own; and those who have to deal with the world should not become engrossed in it. I say this because the world as we know it is passing away.

"Now" never passes away. "Now" is what we used to spell "Deus," "Brahman," "Adonai," "Allah," "Abba," "Anuttara Samyak Sambodhi" (Unexcelled perfect enlightenment), and "Divine Mother."

No matter how you turn it, ("now, mou, won"), this present and only moment is here, mine, victorious, and nothing special. It is also nowhere, noone's, nothing to gain, and profoundly circumincessionally interpenetrating.

Only now is; nothing else is.

Now, then, what is there to do?

Nothing!

however hard I think
still its the same
walking on fallen leaves
(--Santoka Taneda)

Nothing is growing short, Paul, except the obscure and illusory thought that there is an extension of time for us to durate.

For this morning, the counter-impression occurs.

Each face at each instant is the whole of creation present at origin of all that is.

Oh, look, here you are!

Another name for God.

How nice to see you!

Received email:

Today is the two-year anniversary of the infamous Citizens United Supreme Court ruling. That case gave corporations like Exxon or Bank of America approval to spend millions of dollars buying elections.

It is already happening, and it is wrong.

Changing Supreme Court decisions can take decades. A better alternative is to pass a constitutional amendment.

A new campaign called United for the People is underway to do just that. And, since we don’t have time to waste, this effort needs support from the very highest levels. Today we're petitioning President Obama to support a constitutional amendment to boot big money out of elections. http://act.rebuildthedream.com/sign/overturn_citizens_united?akid=390.154765.ct0su5&rd=1&t=1

Returning to contemplate email:

I have not grown sub-clauses and flow charts, nor have corporations grown lungs or hearts. Please help stop illusory legal metaphors such as "a corporation is a person."
Help return our country to real flesh and blood people away from corporate P&L spreadsheets.

If I was a political person, that's what I might say. As a religiously humanitarian person, this is my prayer.

Exactly and doubtlessly

Fire started in Wohnkuche wood stove. Temperature bumped in bookshed/retreat. Additional zafu and zabuton brought across snow covered wooden walkways from cabin to bookshed in faint blue nascent light rising behind bare limbs on Sally's land. Chairs moved in meditation area, incense lighted to welcome dawn -- the chores of Saturday morning preparation for practice. Like some Jikido lighting candles outside meditation hall and fires inside the enclosure, bare legged in calf boots and down vest, shuffling back and forth between buildings in inner silence with crunch underfoot, I carry out these dawning tasks grateful to be alive, walking, breathing, and about to brew coffee.

The Buddhas left their Sutras
Because people are hard to change
It's not just a matter of saintly or stupid
Each and every heart throws up its barricade
Each piles up his own mountain of karma
How could they guess that what they clasp so close
Is sorrow
Unwilling to ponder, as day and night
They do embrace the falsehood of the flesh

- Shih-te

Maybe not falsehood so much as only a fragment of the story. I look at my hand. Without understanding it to be servant of arm, trunk, neck, ears, brain, and mind, it would in it's forgetfulness think it is free without consequences to take what does not belong to it, hit what it thinks should be hit, and spend the whole day picking items from sale bins without any conversation with checkbook.

We are of a piece. We're asleep to this. Sometimes even snoring loudly in blissful unawareness of our enormous body and boundless spirit. Nothing in the universe is not part of our body. Our shutter-blink partitioning consciousness cannot extend the scope of lens wide enough to encompass the magnitude of our seen and unseen reality, so we sketch in miniature tiny canvases with delicate detail some limited acquiescence of our barrierless infinite Self.

There is no hope. Hope is a thought for some other time some other place. There is, however, profound unverifiable faith and love that what we are, although unknown, is exactly and doubtlessly what we are.

Home is where the odd and curmudgeonly truth dwells as a hermit in the forest eager for its solitude yet longing for a visit to pass an afternoon.

Beannacht
("Blessing")

On the day when
the weight deadens
on your shoulders
and you stumble,
may the clay dance
to balance you.

And when your eyes
freeze behind
the grey window
and the ghost of loss
gets in to you,
may a flock of colours,
indigo, red, green,
and azure blue
come to awaken in you
a meadow of delight.

When the canvas frays
in the currach of thought
and a stain of ocean
blackens beneath you,
may there come across the waters
a path of yellow moonlight
to bring you safely home

May the nourishment of the earth be yours,
may the clarity of light be yours,
may the fluency of the ocean be yours,
may the protection of the ancestors be yours.
And so may a slow
wind work these words
of love around you,
an invisible cloak
to mind your life.

(~ John O'Donohue, in Echoes of Memory)

Ah, yes, let gentle poets leave footprints through fresh snow into that hidden place of eremitic dwelling where our belonging sits and converses with Truth of Self of an afternoon with few words awakening delight!

No, one owns; Christ

This is why I love the new interface of blogger: Everytime I navigate away and return there's nothing there. Everything I've written that morning is gone. I've lost hundreds of words. Started over dozens of times. Learned nothing, quite obviously, not saving.

Christ doesn't save.

Every instant is new.

Christ sits in cafe looking out as you approach crossing street entering shoppe slide into booth where Christ sits now looking out as another you glances at watch pays for coffee and wonders whether being Christ will ever become more obvious as you look over to tale and table and see Christ gone, you turn, exit door, look left and right, exhale, create the world, enter it, astonish it with your love and beauty, allow it to destroy illusions you carry as your identity papers, wander nameless and kindly through this next thought and this next one, until you realize the snow falling around you is where you've come from and to which you will return whether or not the sip from coffee cup raised to lips gets to where it naturally goes or if the dream we call our life will kiss the phantasmic companion by our side which waking will only deepen appreciation of the invitation.

15. The face of truth is hidden by your orb
Of gold, O sun. May you remove your orb
So that I, who adore the true, may see

16. The glory of truth. O nourishing sun,
Solitary traveler, controller,
Source of life for all creatures, spread your light
And subdue your dazzling splendor
So that I may see your blessed Self.
Even that very Self am I!

17. May my life merge in the Immortal
When my body is reduced to ashes.
O mind, meditate on the eternal Brahman.
Remember the deeds of the past.
Remember, O mind, remember.
(--from Isha Upanishad, Eknath Easwaran Translation)

Christ does not save creation, doesn't save us from creation, doesn't allow some contract killer to snuff his life for a grander payoff.

Christ is creation. Christ is you and me. There is no payoff. Live and work as Christ as this very place we are.

There is only what is. What is not is not.

No one owns Christ.

Christ is ownerless revelation of the reality we call Christ.

Half and half mixes well swirling cloud in fresh brew
morning awakening in snow over everything.