As or as presently; aporia and aphasia

Now that religion has gotten a bad name, it is time to admit I am a religious person. A religious person listens to the ways people attempt to live through the difficulties and mysteries experienced in this world, this existential facticity of being-in-the-world. A religious person is willing to contemplate that we are all in this great adventure of unknowing together, that we are attempting to sort through the possibilities and potentialities presented us with as much integrity and intuition as we can muster.

Karen Armstrong might say it is a matter of open aporia and commen apophasis we share when confronted with the stark ambiguity and uncertainty comprising our real experience and shared nature. We stand withing the absurd making choices that are absurd with a paucity of evidence and shortness of time with which, absurdly, to think, feel, and act.

Observe the example of Buddha Shakyamuni of the Jeta Grove, who practiced sitting up straight for six years even though he was gifted with intrinsic wisdom. Still celebrated is Master Bodhidharma of the Shaolin Temple, who sat facing the wall for nine years although he had already received the mind seal. Ancient sages were like this; who nowadays does not need to practice as they did?
- Dogen (1227)

Aporia, we don't know where to turn. Aphasia, we don't know what to say. So we turn in. So we say nothing.

In prison Friday morning, at Buddhist group, eleven of us sit in silent zazen. There was one open space on green mat between Ed and Pidgeon, across from Josh and Chris for the first sitting. Rokpa, the prison-visiting Border Collie, wandered to it, on his own, and placed himself in perfect alignment on the blanket as the session began. This hermitage living meditating dog does zazen with an ease of presence that astounds.

Later, at meetingbrook conversation, we read sections from Confucian and Taoist texts with shared circle comments by Michael, Brian, Steve, Doris and Chris. Afterwards, breakfast at Moody's, capped by four-berry piece of pie with whipped cream, puts the morning on its proper axis navigating home.

If I Told Him, A Completed Portrait of Picasso
BY GERTRUDE STEIN

            If I told him would he like it. Would he like it if I told him.
            Would he like it would Napoleon would Napoleon would would he like it.
            If Napoleon if I told him if I told him if Napoleon. Would he like it if I told him if I told him if Napoleon. Would he like it if Napoleon if Napoleon if I told him. If I told him if Napoleon if Napoleon if I told him. If I told him would he like it would he like it if I told him.
            Now.
            Not now.
            And now.
            Now.
            Exactly as as kings.
            Feeling full for it.
            Exactitude as kings.
            So to beseech you as full as for it.
            Exactly or as kings.
            Shutters shut and open so do queens. Shutters shut and shutters and so shutters shut and shutters and so and so shutters and so shutters shut and so shutters shut and shutters and so. And so shutters shut and so and also. And also and so and so and also.
            Exact resemblance to exact resemblance the exact resemblance as exact resemblance, exactly as resembling, exactly resembling, exactly in resemblance exactly and resemblance. For this is so. Because.
            Now actively repeat at all, now actively repeat at all, now actively repeat at all.
            Have hold and hear, actively repeat at all.
            I judge judge.
            As a resemblance to him.
            Who comes first. Napoleon the first.
            Who comes too coming coming too, who goes there, as they go they share, who shares all, all is as all as as yet or as yet.
            Now to date now to date. Now and now and date and the date.
            Who came first Napoleon at first. Who came first Napoleon the first. Who came first, Napoleon first.
            Presently.
            Exactly do they do.
            First exactly.
            Exactly do they do.
            First exactly.
            And first exactly.
            Exactly do they do.
            And first exactly and exactly.
            And do they do.
            At first exactly and first exactly and do they do.
            The first exactly.
            And do they do.
            The first exactly.
            At first exactly.
            First as exactly.
            As first as exactly.
            Presently
            As presently.
            As as presently.
            He he he he and he and he and and he and he and he and and as and as he and as he and he. He is and as he is, and as he is and he is, he is and as he and he and as he is and he and he and and he and he.
            Can curls rob can curls quote, quotable.
            As presently.
            As exactitude.
            As trains.
            Has trains.
            Has trains.
            As trains.
            As trains.
            Presently.
            Proportions.
            Presently.
            As proportions as presently.
            Farther and whether.
            Was there was there was there what was there was there what was there was there there was there.
            Whether and in there.
            As even say so.
            One.
            I land.
            Two.
            I land.
            Three.
            The land.
            Three
            The land.
            Three.
            The land.
            Two
            I land.
            Two
            I land.
            One
            I land.
            Two
            I land.
            As a so.
            The cannot.
            A note.
            They cannot
            A float.
            They cannot.
            They dote.
            They cannot.
            They as denote.
            Miracles play.
            Play fairly.
            Play fairly well.
            A well.
            As well.
            As or as presently.
            Let me recite what history teaches. History teaches.

(Poem by Gertrude Stein, “If I Told Him, A Complete Portrait of Picasso” from Selections: Gertrude Stein. Copyright © 2008 by University of California Press) http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/243168#poem)

Rokie and I go out to bookshed/retreat at 4:30am to bump the heat for Saturday morning practice at 7:30am. The full moon has climbed Ragged Mountain and looks out to the east where twilight turns in the dark pulling covers over its head for another few winks before waking birds through silhouette branches fly to seed and dawning chatter.

We are not seen.

We are religious.

Winking ourselves in blue-gray blanket.

mindless wayfarer; navigating doldrums

When I look at my foolish life I wonder how I could have so carefully cultivated failure and impertinence so as to become the insignificant nobody I am today. Ha! Only kidding. No cultivation was needed. It came naturally and without effort. Like falling off a log. No skill required. Only no footing. And gravity. Like the water flowing down ragged mountain into dirt cellar to be sump-pumped up and out window to continue its journey to road coming down from Hope.

It's an odd travel plan.

“What is no mind? If there is no mind at all, who sees reality; who awakens to the way? And who can expound the way to teach?”

No mind means that there is no deluded, foolish mind; it does not mean there is no mind to discern false from true. If one doesn’t think of sentient beings, doesn’t long for Buddhas either, doesn’t think of illusion or seek enlightenment, doesn’t go along with the honor of others, does not hope for fame, profit, support, or reputation, does not shrink from attacks from those who are resentful or hostile, and does not add any discriminating thoughts about any good or evil, one is called a mindless wayfarer.

Thus it is said, “The path is mindless of union with anyone, a mindless person unites with the way.”
(--from Treatise on Sitting Meditation, Part 2, Daikaku, 1213-1279, http://www.dailyzen.com/zen/zen_reading1202.asp

So many spiritual paths, teachers, practices! Why bother? What for?

I don't know.

These days I've been wearing the Tibetan wrist bracelet given by Saskia.

I come across a good story:

Sanskrit form
Om Mani Padma Hum
mantra of Avalokiteshvara

Tibetan form
Om Mani Peme Hung
mantra of Chenrezig

The True Sound of Truth
An old story speaks about a similar problem. A devoted meditator, after years concentrating on a particular mantra, had attained enough insight to begin teaching. The student's humility was far from perfect, but the teachers at the monastery were not worried.

A few years of successful teaching left the meditator with no thoughts about learning from anyone; but upon hearing about a famous hermit living nearby, the opportunity was too exciting to be passed up.

The hermit lived alone on an island at the middle of a lake, so the meditator hired a man with a boat to row across to the island. The meditator was very respectful of the old hermit. As they shared some tea made with herbs the meditator asked him about his spiritual practice. The old man said he had no spiritual practice, except for a mantra which he repeated all the time to himself. The meditator was pleased: the hermit was using the same mantra he used himself -- but when the hermit spoke the mantra aloud, the meditator was horrified!

"What's wrong?" asked the hermit.

"I don't know what to say. I'm afraid you've wasted your whole life! You are pronouncing the mantra incorrectly!"

"Oh, Dear! That is terrible. How should I say it?"

The meditator gave the correct pronunciation, and the old hermit was very grateful, asking to be left alone so he could get started right away. On the way back across the lake the meditator, now confirmed as an accomplished teacher, was pondering the sad fate of the hermit.

"It's so fortunate that I came along. At least he will have a little time to practice correctly before he dies." Just then, the meditator noticed that the boatman was looking quite shocked, and turned to see the hermit standing respectfully on the water, next to the boat.

"Excuse me, please. I hate to bother you, but I've forgotten the correct pronunciation again. Would you please repeat it for me?"

"You obviously don't need it," stammered the meditator; but the old man persisted in his polite request until the meditator relented and told him again the way he thought the mantra should be pronounced.

The old hermit was saying the mantra very carefully, slowly, over and over, as he walked across the surface of the water back to the island. http://www.dharma-haven.org/tibetan/meaning-of-om-mani-padme-hung.htm

So, we'll schlep into prison, sit with Buddhists, then sit at round table talking with anyone stopping in, about poetry, politics, prison life, philosophy, Chuang Tzu, economics. Just sitting and talking of a Friday morning.

I don't really regret being nobody.

It's just, at times, I feel a little stupid.

A little...foolish.

Hell, we'll get breakfast at Moody's after prison. That'll make up for doldrums.

Windy Night Haiku

Everything hurts all
at once. Surely, something's up --
Else, what's a death for?

(nunc ipsum, wfh)

into the open, questioning

I think of you as an open question. Myself too. Fact is I see everything as an open question. Life is. God is.

Go ahead, ask it!

Open to what?

If we attempt to explain the experience of “being the question,” we can only talk around it. Because “being” is an experience, and the moment we try to describe it we shut down around an idea. But perhaps we could attempt to describe it by saying that being the question has something to do with our ability to tolerate or bear witness to the full expressions of experience, rather than closing down around them and then reacting to them through our preferences.

We might call this approach to experience “the practice of open questioning.”

When we ask an open question we have not yet found an answer. And this leaves the mind free, unobstructed, and ready for adventure. And yet there is nothing ignorant or vague about this openness, because questioning actively engages the movement and fluidity of life.
(--from The Power of an Open Question, Why a question can be a more powerful tool for practice than its answer, by
Elizabeth Mattis-Namgyel! Tricycle, Fall 2010)
http://www.tricycle.com/practice/power-open-question

Open to "what-is." Here and now. And forever. World without end. Amen!

The real way circulates everywhere;
How could it require practice or enlightenment?
The essential teaching is fully available;
How could effort by necessary?
Furthermore, the entire mirror is free of dust;
Why take steps to polish it?
Nothing is separate from this very place;
Why journey away?
- Dogen (~1227)

Morning sun visits through study window. It's Tommy's birthday. May all kindly and Luddite curmudgeons feel the warmth of the strengthening sun these ending days of winter!

Let's ask openly one another what we see when our questions stand before us attempting to invite us into them thus provoking the disappearance of the questioner into the open, questioning.

Where's my kazoo? Time to play 'Happy Birthday' -- my singular repertoire.

Who do we thank for this glorious morning? And when shall we do so? Will you point out to me the way to dwell gratefully in this cosmos?

Bright

Wonderful moon!

Cracking open, sliding free

During theological and philosophical studies in religion and education it was a delight to read things that never seem to have reached the ordinary churchgoers in Sunday pews. at least not in the catholic pews of local parishes. And that is a shame. Mystics and scientists, poets and contemplatives lend texture and surprising depth to the religious imagination.

Perhaps Delio's most original, intriguing, and challenging contribution is her final chapter, “Christ in Evolution: Technology and Extraterrestrial Life.” Delio says, “The meaning of Christ in evolution includes our ability to transcend ourselves through the creativity of technology” (165). Thus, in her view, technology is an integral part of the ongoing story of Christ in evolution and of the human story. She calls humans “technosapiens” who are “techno-transcendent.” Our interaction with technology and our technological creativity, if spurred by our restless heart’s desire for transcendence toward God, may be a gracefilled activity. For in our creativity, Delio explains, we potentially participate as co-creators with the divine in the dynamic processes of evolution. However, she warns us:“The power of technology is such that it can abet the movement toward the fullness of Christ or it can thwart it” (165). For scholars working at the intersection of theology and technology, the questions and issues Delio raises here will likely spur more questions. Fortunate will be all those theologians, scientists, students, teachers, and preachers who encounter this stunning book, a work rich in insight, cosmic in scope, yet very much down to earth?
( from review of: Christ in Evolution. By Ilia Delio. Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 2008. Pages, xii + 228. Paper,
Reviewed by Eileen D. Crowley, Catholic Theological Union, in New Theology Review) http://newtheologyreview.com/book_review/christ-evolution

Not only, it might be said, is evolution not at odds with Christianity -- but it might just be that Christ is evolution. Christ is the emergence of consciousness and compassion in the realm of existence sorely longing for these qualities of being.

Waking me up
To the spring that's come [or, coming]
Water trickles down
The valley, and long crag-bound ice
Now cracks open, slides free.
- Saigyo (1118-1190)

Lands here.

Moon bright on frozen snow.

Good company

Lao Tzu thinks we are earth and heaven. So does Teilhard. And Panikkar.

No personal interests, says the shadowy Chinese sage.

Cosmic consciousness in the offing, says the French paleontologist.

Hidden Christ, says the Spanish-Indian cosmotheandrist..

In the Ch'an perspective wisdom is a state
That is free from attachments, 
Free from measurement, 
Free from self-reference
And empty of vexation. 
 - Sheng Yen

It, we, will be cold in Maine tonight.

slowly giving way to a new configuration

Losing car key and losing mind are close cousins.

On Sunday morning it hardly seems to matter that Christ does not have a car and does not attend church.

Every place is here. As is Christ.

Letting go of fixation is effectively a process of learning to be free, because every time we let go of something, we become free of it. Whatever we fixate upon limits us because fixation makes us dependent upon something other than ourselves. Each time we let go of something, we experience another level of freedom.   (- Traleg Kyabgon Rinpoche, "Letting Go of Spiritual Experience")

Vagrant Buddhas and Bodhisattva Christs wander in their own footprint the walking circles of wisdom and compassion. Churches, temples, mosques, and manners empty out. The profitable and the ideological replace piety and mystic vision in the narthex and sanctuary. Bricks and morter wall up insight and grace. The longing to see and do has stepped out of the building. We have forgotten not only what we think but why we thought it as we did.

 We live in a predominately Christian culture which has lost its living connection to the symbolism of wafer and wine. Lacking spiritual sustenance there is a genuine hunger and thirst. The archetypal structure behind the wafer and wine is slowly giving way to a new configuration, but we are in chaos during the transition. That chaos breeds loneliness, fear and alienation. While that sense of aloneness is hard to endure, it can be of supreme value in the analytic process. The new life always comes out of the dispossessed, as Christ came from the cow stable.  (-- Marion Woodman).http://www.iwise.com/DGh8f

Without an understanding of myth or religion, without an understanding of the relationship between destruction and creation, death and rebirth, the individual suffers the mysteries of life as meaningless mayhem alone.
(-- Marion Woodman )http://www.quotes-quotes.com/authorquotes/Marion_Woodman.html

Is righteousness "right mind"?

If we are in right mind, do we see things as they are? Constantly changing. Always escaping the confines of thought, belief, ideology, dogma, and position papers?

A time will come when we will move without moving.

We will be there without leaving here.

Christ and the Bodhisattva will find themselves in one another.

Within one another's presence.

Church and temple, zendo and mosque will  be in and walk in our shoes.

And we will be barefoot.

Saturday Haiku

Rain on snow -- limb by
Limb, falling, failing, smooshing
Bough on road -- why rush?

(nunc ipsum, wfh)

Upaya

Revive the skill. Be with one another in everydayness.

 

When someone who has not attained the Way practices Zen for a time, that person is Buddha for the duration; if one practices Zen for a day, one is Buddha for a day; if one practices Zen for one's entire lifetime, one is Buddha for a lifetime. And whoever fosters this faith is a person of great capacity for the Dharma.
- Enni Ben'en (1201-1280)

We are becoming too wordy and worrisome in the rhetoric used toward those disagreeing with us.

Today we could practice looking at one another with kind heart and mere presence of mind.

Create the world in the image of appreciatory fondness!

into a more agreeable myth.

Before rushing to condemn.

Before it is too late, we might wish to translate our lives into a more agreeable myth.

Original: 子曰：“《诗》三百，一言以蔽之，曰：‘思无邪。’”


English: Confucius said: "The Odes has three hundred verses, but to use one sentence to describe the essence of it is 'Think No Evil'" (Verse 2 of Analects of Confucius, Chapter 2)
http://www.chinese-wiki.com/index.php?title=Verse_2-Analects_of_Confucius_Chapter_2&printable=yes

Confucius thought about the story he might have been going to speak. Then he remembered, "Think no evil." Many do. Some have or have had powerful media presence.

I prefer Confucius to those who think politics is a game to win and destroy your enemy opponent.

A new story is needed.

Three in the morning

1. A new 'Mu' --

Question: Is it true no one has ever seen God?
Answer:
No,
One has ever seen,
God.

2. Compassion and understanding present gratefulness --

Question: Who are you?
Answer: I am you!
Question: Then, who am I?
Answer: Thank you for asking! I am waiting for you to answer me.

3. Three is not a crowd; three is community --

Question: Is there a way around 'two,' a way to move beyond dualism and the difficulties of dwelling in a world of separation and 'othering' discord?
Answer: O-what-it!

One -
Way here
Around two -
Is
Three

(Comment: Three is where one and two go when they need to move beyond themselves and rest in an embrace of interdependent co-origination and circumincessional interpenetration.)

all this is folly to the world

So, I fall on ice. Fast and hard. Just that. And pain. In back and wrist. Moving is difficult. Lie still in bed.

God Is Love

God is Love. How many times have we heard the word "love" being used to define that which is ultimately indefinable? I suppose it is because that's the only word that can even bring us close to grasping the ungraspable. When we use "love" to define that which is transcendent, absolute, and metaphysical, we're using it to describe qualities and attributes that are non-ordinary, that represent a higher dimension of human experience, intuition, and cognition. That is why the love that is God is transpersonal, because it points us far beyond our unique individuality or the unique individuality of any other.
—Andrew Cohen, EnlightenNext/

Saskia arrives home from sibling attention to mother's house -- packing, sorting, remembering -- and is out again this morning. I am with Confucius  and Lao Tzu. And pain.

The splendor of the tathagata
Is the compassion that dwells
At the center of all minds.
The clothing of the tathagata
Is the gentleness and patience
That dwell in every mind.
The seat of the tathagata
Is the emptiness of all phenomena.
- Lotus Sutra

I wonder aloud about keeping things fresh and clear and in perspective when a student asks about her writing and a tiredness she experiences. The mind wants us to believe it's all the same, nothing new, repetition and revulsion. Mind is good at this persuasion. It seems to me that beginners mind is not good at it. Beginners mind sees everything and every act as first thing, first act. Like Upanishadic literature, one without a two.

A Girl

   The tree has entered my hands,
The sap has ascended my arms,
The tree has grown in my breast -
Downward,
The branches grow out of me, like arms.

Tree you are,
Moss you are,
You are violets with wind above them.
A child - so high - you are,
And all this is folly to the world.

(Poem by Ezra Pound)

The universe walks around in your shoes. (Pound said a poet should not be trusted who used the word 'cosmic' in a poem. John Maloney had that on his kitchen wall in Cambridge 37 years ago.)

There's a cosmic understanding that only you possess. If you do not share it, the rest of us are desolate. Please, share it without tiring of it.

If I had anything to say I probably wouldn't say it. Because I don't, I do.

Go against character. Reinvent yourself and pretend you are not that person, knowing you are, not the invention, but the creative source of the longing to be what you not yet are. All of it.

The source of consciousness cannot be an object in consciousness. To know the source is to be the source. When you realize that you are not the person, but the pure and calm witness, and that fearless awareness is your very being, you are the being. It is the source, the inexhaustible Possibility. (65) (-- from Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj's I AM THAT)

It is, I admit, a curiosity -- this interest in becoming what we already are. One without a two in a world in love with duality and twoness. One with profound  awareness that one and one make for intimate interpenetration -- relationality and connection as proleptic prelude for disappearance of the other and restful residing in the source of what is.

Perhaps all our striving and effort to clarify is merely straw sweeping pathway so as to allow the pathway to be there as it is without impediment to the awareness of what is there without impediment.

Seems like folly. Might be. Thus my name might be 'Raca.'

The self you want to know, is it some second self? Are you made of several selves? Surely, there is only one self and you are that self. The self you are is the only self there is. Remove and abandon your wrong ideas about yourself and there it is, in all its glory. (516-7)

There is no second, or higher self to search for. You are the highest self, only give up the false ideas you have about your self. (517)

Your own self is your ultimate teacher (sadguru). The outer teacher (guru) is merely a milestone. It is only your inner teacher that will walk with you to the goal, for it is the goal. (51) (Nisargadatta, ibid,
http://www.nonduality.com/asmi2.htm)

Raca it is!

Call me this, brother.

Being terribly understood

Ignorance of impermanence, the man speaking on the podcast said, is what attachment is. He was speaking of the 2nd Noble Truth. It is often spoken of as 'desire' or 'craving' -- so, I like his emphasis. I think of this while watching documentary about gang related violence and 'interrupters' -- those who know this kind of violence and are committed to inserting themselves into the heat and passion as willing interrupters of the killing and revenge that well up.

Like watching anger arise within yourself and not giving it your arms and legs.

When you can listen to your thoughts
without becoming lost in what you hear;
when you can hear them
without adding or subtracting,
without editing;
when you can remember the
very worst without cringing,
without even an eyeblink of the mind,
it's then your life will turn.
- Journeys on Mind Mountain

There is no end to desire and craving, anger and revenge. We seem to forever be put upon, short-changed, disrespected, stole from, resentful, punked, turned down, turned out, rejected, unappreciated, and betrayed. It's a hard experience to get your mind around. It's easier to attack and avenge than to watch and let go. Who can do that work?

Maybe that's one of the reasons 'right concentration' comes as 8th path in the road map to travel through suffering and your life with less and less attachment to what is passing through.

CONNUBIAL

Because with alarming accuracy
she’d been identifying patterns
I was unaware of—this tic, that
tendency, like the way I’ve mastered
the language of intimacy
in order to conceal how I felt—

I knew I was in danger
of being terribly understood.

(Poem by Stephen Dunn)

"All being is nuptial." That's what I remember Karl Stern writing in his book "The Flight From Woman (1965) -- I read it over forty-five years ago. It stayed with me, as you can see. Like a koan, it stays. The way he used the word 'nuptial.'

I watched the film "Shaolin" yesterday. At end, after devastation and dramatically choreographed impermanence, a brief cinematic flashback conversation between husband, (taken refuge and repentance in temple as a monk), and wife as he hands her urn with a loved one's ashes:

He: "Life is about affinity. Follow affinity and live freely." [hands urn to her] "Here, let her keep you company."
Her: "You're not leaving?"
He: "Cao Man" [his brother, attacking temple] "is here. His mistakes are also mine. Only I can help him."
Her: "You've really changed. I know we can never be together again, but... I really like you as you are now."
(-- dialogue from film, Shaolin, 2011)

I thought -- What a good ending line!

It has a Fred Rogers feel to it. And it could be a koan to be recited over and over, indefinitely, until, and even after, it breaks open into us as a realization completely liberating and finally understood:

"I really like you

As you are

Now."

Start off at this moment saying it three times...slowly.

Then go to the kitchen counter, reheat the coffee or pour hot water for tea, and sip the phrase, sound by sound, syllable by syllable, word by word, looking out window into this new consideration.

After Quaker Meeting

Prologue:
Two phrases during silence.

Logos:

1) "Be still and know that I am God." (Psalm 46:10)
1.1) Re-rendered as: Know God, be still, I am that! (Be still as you are. That is how you come to know God.)

2) "Honi soit qui mal y pense" is a French phrase meaning: "Shamed be he who thinks evil of it".
2.1) Re-rendered as: On y soit qui mal y pense: One becomes what one thinks.) If evil thoughts, evil. If good thoughts, good. Watch your mind; see what you wish to become.)

Epilogue:
Perhaps what silence and stillness offer is translation into the language of nature -- an ordinary, transformative, elemental, concretion of what we used to call 'spiritual' into a watchful, engaging, presenting silent and still listening with attentive awareness for what is sounding itself before us.

From the bottom of my heart

I weave a new green painter double passing thorough stem eye bolt of peapod at dock knotted against itself at beginning of reach across to tie-bar to distribute pressure of pull these windy swelling seas of late February soon to leap into March.

The time of year when troubling diagnoses of personality disorder and post-traumatic stress seem to be rubber stamp applicable to anyone paying attention to the way the world has decided to stagger through the solar system occupied and populated by maladaptive bipeds angry and antipathetic against personal objects of individual and collective illusory opposition and deranged dissociative obsessive delusion. We don't seem to like each other very much. We hide within drugs or alcohol. We hurt and murder whomever we name 'enemy.' And we create a cover story that 'God' is our inspiration and casus belli against sinful, unfaithful, and evil 'others.'

I hope there's an early spring and a successful Mayan Calendar planetary tidy-up this 2012.

If you want to understand that
All within the three realms
Is nothing but buddhamind,
Then contemplate that the Dharma realm
Is nothing but a product of mind.
- Avatamsaka Sutra

What are we thinking?

How has the mind, individual and collective, become the fearful, antagonistic, flesh-cutting, dissembling, distortive lens it has become?

Sugar?

Or gluten?

Maybe, the distress caused by belief in the supernatural or our unwillingness to be silent and to contemplate reality rather than our familiar pastime of dissecting, diverting, and destroying anything or anyone we consider 'not one of us.'

The universe we have created is insane. Contrast this with the universe as it is in itself, which, I submit, is sanity itself. What is it we are not seeing?

Gratefulness.org includes a note about Raimon Panikkar and a letter he wrote when he was dying:

Fr. Raimundo Panikkar's Farewell Letter

Father Raimundo Panikkar is preparing to leave the visible world. Born on November 3, 1918 in Barcelona, Spain to a Catholic mother and Hindu father, Fr. Raimundo Panikkar has long specialized in the dialogue between Christianity and Asian religions. Of his first trip from Europe to India, Panikkar once wrote: "I left as a Christian, I found myself a Hindu, and I return as a Buddhist, without ever having ceased to be a Christian." His best known books include The Cosmotheandric Experience (Orbis, 1993) and The Infra-religious Dialogue (Paulist, 1978).

In recent weeks, Father Panikkar mainly sleeps and remains in complete silence. On 28th January 2010 he sent his personally signed last letter:

"Dearest Friends,

"I would like to communicate to you that I believe the moment has come to withdraw from all public activity, both the direct and the intellectual participation, to which I have dedicated all my life as a way of sharing reflections. I will continue to be close to you in a deeper way, through silence and prayer, and in the same way I would ask you to be close to me in this last period of my existence.

"You have often heard me say that a person is a knot in a network of relationships.

"In taking my leave from you I would like to thank you from the bottom of my heart for having enriched me with the relationship I have had with each of you.

"I am also grateful to all of those who, either in person or through association, continue working to spread my message and the sharing of my ideals, even without me.

"Thankful for the gift of life which is only such if lived in communion with others: it is with this spirit that I have lived my ministry."    http://www.gratefulness.org/readings/panikkar-farewell.htmhttp://www.gratefulness.org/readings/panikkar-farewell.htm

Our 'Conversation Kitchen' is named after Panikkar. (How many people name their kitchen after someone?)

"Communion with others" is, perhaps, a good place to start. Also, a good place to end. Maybe mental illness begins to end with the journey of communion with others. Maybe religions try to offer a template of connection. That some pervert the template of connection is just mental illness finding new avenues of opportunistic appropriation.

"Relationship," realization of, cultivation of, respect for -- this is a pathway worth contemplating. We don't have to force or create relationship. We already are related and relational to and with everything and everybody.

Would that we could see!

Would that we might be what we are! 

 

without blinking -- (a Saturday haiku)

WITHOUT BLINKING

solitude begins --

morning practice done -- drip, drip,

melting overhead

(wfh, nunc ipsum)

(What a wise attitude, this sweet Border Collie!)

what’s actually going on

Rain.

The work of Buddhism is to awaken, to come out of the sleepy dreams and notions of reality that we hold to be true and replace them with a direct experience of what is more accurately occurring. To awaken in this way, we need to become conscious of what’s actually going on at the very depths of our experience.
(-- Will Johnson, "Full Body, Empty Mind")

In prison today sitting zazen.

Tonight, off one cushion, on another pillow.

Awake to sleep.

feelers of earth, peripatetic and paraphasiac

Dinner was pistachios, tangerine,  banana, carrots and celery dipped into spinach and artichoke hummus between Bangor and Searsport on 1A coming down from Millenocket on 95 where the speed limit is an unfamiliar 75 after some 600 miles in three days. We are listening to the book on cd Here If You Need Me by Kate Braestrup.

To those who ask the Warden Service Chaplain where God is in all the difficult gone-missings, drownings, suicides, broke through the ice calls to which the Fish and Game Wardens are called out to the woods, Braestrup says, "...if you want to know where God is in this or in anything, look for love."

Many people want a God of church pew, or one found between covers of Bible, Koran, or some other scripture, or maybe the God of proclamations made that you have found God and are either born again in Jesus or will die a glorious blazing martyrs' death for Allah. Between 'Have you accepted Jesus into your heart?' and 'God is Great!' is a very wide and spacious open space where most of us in the world live without the worrisome proclamations or chapters and verses some feel are the only membership cards recognized for their club or clubs. Someone is either checking your ID at club door or preparing to bash your head with God-issued clubs for not belonging to the club.

Within the Way there are no obstacles at all, not even a pinpoint of obstruction. There are, however, obstacles in training. These are all self-created and due to the grasping nature of our practice. The coarse obstacles we create are doubt, fear, and taking the Way to exist objectively. The more subtle are the concepts of attainment and various levels. The Way avoids nothing at all, so we may be grateful even for obstacles. Apart from obstacles, there is no training.
(- Anon, DailyZen)

Snowshoeing in the woods outside Millenocket with faithful walking companion Border Collie I follow a narrow stretch of cross-country ski tracks around turns on tired snow on an abandoned narrow bed of road through the woods. Looking down I notice that it seems whoever was skiing stepped off their skis and walked with large footprint in the moderately deep snow for a stretch, a perception that was at odds with the fact that the ski ruts were uninterrupted. Then the footprints turned off to the right and down the embankment into the brush. Of a sudden the realization that an enormous moose had tracked the route I travelled brought me up cautiously as we walked on deeper into the woods. I soon decided I was tired from yesterday's treks, consulted my iPhone as to what to do if I met a moose, and concluded it would be a good plan to return to car, grab a snooze, and ready myself for the drive south.

Imaginary Number

The mountain that remains when the universe is destroyed
is not big and is not small.
Big and small are

comparative categories, and to what
could the mountain that remains when the universe is destroyed
be compared?

Consciousness observes and is appeased.
The soul scrambles across the screes.
The soul,

like the square root of minus 1,
is an impossibility that has its uses.

(-Poem by Vijay Seshadri, in, Poetry, February 2012).

When Kate Braestrup tells the stories of little girl, ice fisherman, hiker, destraught woman, wardens that search and find, and herself, also searching and finding -- we are recipients of the use of soul to glance on souls coming and going on this mountainside of deep feeling.

We are nobler, in a morning store-bought coffee in plastic lined cardboard cup sort of way.

The earth is our witness. Our task is to see what the earth sees, unflinching, ready to respond to the language of earth with the heart and soul of what we are -- feelers of earth, peripatetic and paraphasiac, attempting to walk with and pronounce accurately what we see, what we are, seeing.

The Crossing

The snail at the edge of the road
inches forward, a trim gray finger
of a fellow in pinstripe suit.
He’s burdened by his house
that has to follow
where he goes. Every inch,
he pulls together
all he is,
all he owns,
all he was given.

The road is wide
but he is called
by something
that knows him
on the other side.

(Poem by Ruth Moose, 2004)

Empty church; remnant ashes; lovely earth

Presque Isle is quiet. The library at UMPI is quiet. The windmill unturning. My mind/body weary after long snowshoeing twice yesterday.

Whenever I weary of the perceptions of my fellow residents on this earth I take solace in silence. Simple silence, not the kind betokening displeasure or exasperation. Just surcease.

Meiho sounds cranky. Then again, he did get bounced around in the Daijoji's Abbotship following Gikai's death.

Zen-sitting has nothing to do with the doctrine of "teaching, practice, and elucidation" or with the exercise of "commandments, contemplation, and wisdom." You are like a fish with no particular design of remaining in the sea. Nor do you bother with sutras or ideas. To control and pacify the mind is the concern of lessor men. Still less can you hold an idea of Buddha and Dharma. If you attempt to do so, if you train improperly, you are like one who, intending to voyage west, moves east. You must not stray.

- Meiho (1277–1350)

I spend my life in the stray. Meiho would look at me askance. I'm hardly ever in the right place. I email someone whose perceptions about something that occurred in their life seem to stray from the actual cause that preceded it. A presidential candidate expresses views about the current president that appear to stray from any semblance to what we used to call 'truth.' Catholic politician doesn't believe that earth itself is included in sanctification and redemption and salvific sight of God. The church wants to remind him today that we are earth and to earth we shall return.

2. We have forgotten that the revelation found in the natural world and in the wider universe around us is the primary divine revelation.
Revelation is the awakening in us of a sense of divine mystery and power; it is the way the divine communicates. God's revelation to us lies in the scriptures, but also primarily in the story of how our universe began, evolved and brought us humans forth. Berry's namesake, Thomas Aquinas, wrote: "A mistake about creation means a mistake about God."
Since we have learned so much in the past two centuries about the universe and how it unfolded life, then it follows that we have new insight into that primary revelation, an increased understanding of God. We must take this new story of the universe seriously in order to fully understand both God and ourselves.
Spirituality, for Berry, was about enchantment. Awe and wonder are the primary spiritual qualities, the cure for our spiritual autism. Seeing the universe and the earth that gave us birth as sacred mysteries is key to turning the world around.
"If this fascination, this entrancement with life isn't evoked," Berry said, "then our children won't have the energies needed to sustain the sorrows inherent in our condition. They might never discover their true place in the vast world of time and space."
(-- from, Thomas Berry 101, National Catholic Reporter, Some key ideas from the work of Fr. Thomas Berry, Jun.1, 2009, by Rich Heffern) http://ncronline.org/news/ecology/thomas-berry-101

Religious faith and politics corrupt each other. Greed and ambition often baptize each other and preach crusades to honor their newfound purse.

I feel cranky too. Hardly anything seems to be what it really is. Besotted illusion wanders into our living rooms and disheveled imagination crying out, "I am the awaited one! Listen to me!"

I prefer silence. Simple silence. Muted gesture. Soundless kindness with no expectation of in-kind response. Apophatic glance wanting nothing. Benevolent gaze, Kieslowski's character in Dekalog, there, wordless, willing to witness with good will.

I stray.

I am willing to ponder that the only reality is love present quiet and unadorned.

If I wander away I do so knowing full well there is nowhere else to go, and I will return to where love present quiet and unadorned, like earth itself come to God as God itself come to earth, embraces us all wherever we are as we are aware of itself.

Itself alone.

Earth's origination, heaven's destination.

Here and now!

not-two; itself

If Buddha, then you.

I'd rather walk three miles on frozen Mattanawcook Pond in Lincoln Maine, sharp wind slicing through brown scarf, and listen to commentary on Mumonkan, white dog ranging far and wide over ridged surface carved by undercarriage of snowmobiles.

If Christ, then you.

After dark walking shoveled stretches of UMFK campus with bundled workerscomp auditor and ever-willing Border Collie, the vacated buildings and unlighted dorms granting solitude  and exodus this week of winter closedown, top of Maine with unthick snow scarf around its neck.

If you, then all of us

Nameless
Creative Energy --
Spirit Intimate Relational Interdependence
(nunc ipsum; wfh)

In the name of the Father (the Nameless) and of the Son (Creative Energy) and of the Holy Ghost (Spirit Intimate Relational Interdependence)!

It is foolish to think that anything lasts forever. It does, but not the way we think. Nothing doesn't go anywhere else. Nothing stays right here. Just don't expect 40 days of something special,

One breath at a time.

There is no difference between
The mind,
The Buddha,
And all sentient beings.
- Lotus Sutra

One glance.

We are not one; we are not-two.

Crisp, cold morning in Fort Kent.

Vive la difference!

return home, laughing

This is all I need. This is all that is. This, our being-with one another, each of us with each of us, with no other notion, is home even without a home, radically reliant trust, in what is, found here.

We'll stand on the tippy top of Maine at Fort Kent in a few hours and try not to fall off. If we were to fall, Canada would catch us.

To train in the fullest sense of the word, one needs an awareness of the impermanence of all phenomena, including our own lives, and an eye that isn't blind to cause and effect; emotionally speaking, great compassion and courage on behalf of all beings; practically speaking, a firm faith in the Way and a firm resolve to actualize the Way through practice. If there is even a speck of any one of these present when beginning to train, that is enough. All will then become manifest through practice.
(- Anon)

I'm not looking for anything else. Not any more.

Closing poem

Early summer morning,
gentle rain falling.
Zen Temple locked, waiting,
friendly dog inside barking,
welcoming,
no practitioner appearing,
nothing to do but return home,
laughing.
(-- closing poem of LIGHT CAN BE POURED ONLY INTO LIGHT, Transmission Thirty-Two, Tao-Hsin to Hung-Jen, in Living Buddha Zen, by Lex Hixon, c.1995)

Zen is what is happening while we're busy making 'other' -- so much flimflam nonsense! We could, instead, laugh at our radical homelessness, such loving living dwelling as wonderful silence.

Morning light has given shape to window.

Time to load ice grippers and snowshoes, walking poles and readiness to change. Itineracy and mendicancy with reheated coffee and chocolate chip peanut butter muffin.

Is there anything else?

Luckily Hixon prepared us last night at practice when he wrote: "Freedom from something else, not absence of thought or sound, is what constitutes the wonderful silence of zen."

Nothing to do.

Than this.

See this is new; no remembrance

Rowing winter dusk. Northwest wind. Left arm pulling hard to keep line, drop keel off cleat. Nothing in outer harbor, winter mooring buoys at ease -- I need not look back over bow as 15.5 foot Matinicus Peapod labors to lee of Curtis island, no boats to watch for, just the traditional wave to empty porch where Connie used to sit and wave as I rounded southeast corner before he died two summers ago.

Knowing that sentient beings
All have a thousand desires
Gripping the depths of their minds, 
The Buddha teaches them
In accordance with their characters
And conditions. 
With stories, words, and skillful means
He teaches them the truth.
- Lotus Sutra

What is missing will not be supplied. 

At Saturday Morning practice we read from Robert Kennedy SJ's Zen Spirit, Christian Spirit: The Place of Zen in Christian Life. Something he wrote, about being saved by what ignores us, that God is indifferent, that this indifference is a good thing.

This is what he actually says:

 I suggest that nature is teaching us that we are saved by that which ignores us, and that nature's indifference to our designs can be a source of our joy. Nature's disinterest in us mirrors God's disinterest in us that frees us from all our precious prayers and pieties. Nature's silence mirrors God's silence, and awakens silence in us. Nature's indifference to us brings us to awareness of God's indifference and refreshes our courage with the purity of his detachment. Does not our own experience of life suggest the truth that God is indifferent to our plans? How could we worship a God who paid any attention to all our everlasting whining? It is not the purpose of God to glorify us. Is it not rather that we are made to glorify God, to pour ourselves out in darkness and silence, until the heart breaks? Is it not true that we are saved by that which ignores us?
(--p.97, Kennedy)

I'll sit with this awhile.

The words of Qoheleth son of David, king in Jerusalem. Vanity of vanities, Qoheleth says. Vanity of vanities. All is vanity! For all his toil, his toil under the sun, what does man gain by it?
A generation goes, a generation comes, yet the earth stands firm for ever. The sun rises, the sun sets; then to its place it speeds and there it rises. Southward goes the wind, then turns to the north; it turns and turns again; back then to its circling goes the wind. Into the sea all the rivers go, and yet the sea is never filled, and still to their goal the rivers go. All things are wearisome. No man can say that eyes have not had enough of seeing, ears their fill of hearing. What was will be again; what has been done will be done again; and there is nothing new under the sun. Take anything of which it may be said, ‘Look now, this is new.’ Already, long before our time, it existed. Only no memory remains of earlier times, just as in times to come next year itself will not be remembered.
I, Qoheleth, have reigned in Jerusalem over Israel. With the help of wisdom I have been at pains to study all that is done under heaven; oh, what a weary task God has given mankind to labour at! I have seen everything that is done under the sun, and what vanity it all is, what chasing of the wind!
What is twisted cannot be straightened,
what is not there cannot be counted.
I thought to myself, ‘I have acquired a greater stock of wisdom than any of my predecessors in Jerusalem. I have great experience of wisdom and learning. Wisdom has been my careful study; stupidity, too, and folly. And now I have come to recognise that even this is chasing of the wind.
Much wisdom, much grief,
the more knowledge, the more sorrow.
(--from Office of Readings, Sunday, Ecclesiastes 1:1-18)

Not much out there on the water. But what is there is enough. 

The rounding sweep of vulnerability.

So comes to us at times

At old age home. Friday "Poetry, Tea, and Thee." Walt brings "Autumn" by Amy Lowell. He's puzzled over it, he says, and has some thoughts, but just isn't sure. He reads the poem aloud. Then we ask him to read it again, then again, for a total of three times. Maggie, his wife, whose health has been a challenge this past year, hospice designation, macula degeneration, she can't read any more, has her own thoughts about Ms. Lowell. As do Sheilah, Joy, Betty, Lydia, Lee, Bird, and I.

Autumn

They brought me a quilled, yellow dahlia,
Opulent, flaunting.
Round gold
Flung out of a pale green stalk.
Round, ripe gold
Of maturity,
Meticulously frilled and flaming,
A fire-ball of proclamation:
Fecundity decked in staring yellow
For all the world to see.
They brought a quilled, yellow dahlia,
To me who am barren
Shall I send it to you,
You who have taken with you
All I once possessed?

(Poem by Amy Lowell)

We sit around for almost a half hour talking about poetry once the formal hour is over. We like each other's company. I tell my notion about poetry. I say, "Poetry is Being written" -- as if that says anything at all. Betty says poetry is discovery -- she remembers its first bite.

We each steal, to take away with us, two or more cookies with sweet swirling topping from cellophane covered platter brought from kitchen for the gathering, like the children we are -- these eighty and ninety-somethings conspiring to reward ourselves later with bites of forbidden fruit -- like stealthy phrases from unwitting poem by Amy Lowell no one is sure has been written.

We send it to you, Ms. Lowell, for we are fecund and happy to be together of a Friday afternoon.

Earlier Sheilah brought Longfellow. We were pleased to have him start us in the right direction, his gift reminding us.

The Sound of the Sea

THE sea awoke at midnight from its sleep,
And round the pebbly beaches far and wide
I heard the first wave of the rising tide
Rush onward with uninterrupted sweep;

A voice out of the silence of the deep,
A sound mysteriously multiplied
As of a cataract from the mountain's side,
Or roar of winds upon a wooded steep.

So comes to us at times, from the unknown
And inaccessible solitudes of being,
The rushing of the sea-tides of the soul;
And inspirations, that we deem our own,
Are some divine foreshadowing and foreseeing
Of things beyond our reason or control.

(Poem By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow)

A simple afternoon, being created, our time together!

Are you seeing someone else

One of the men at the prison is going to be married.

He wanted to ask me something, about God, and God being a jealous God, because this guy -- a Buddhist, wants to, but can't, pray as a Christian, and feels ...well, unfaithful.

I tell him God's jealousy isn't like ours. God wants each for himself, herself, itself. Not how we think. God wants you to be you, me to be me, that person to be that person. When each is itself, God is good with that. But when you try to live according to someone else's life, when I am not myself but an imitation of another, God becomes jealous and sad and even a bit angry.

God wants nothing other than you to be faithfully you.

Contemplate the body until you see its true form.
Then you will cease your grasping.
These contemplations will extinguish the fires of desire
In the same way that torrential rains
Extinguish wild fires.
- Perfection of Wisdom

God is all of it in particular.

Can we ever imagine what it means to observe the law of God? The law of God is that you are the law of God. Don't break it. Love it. Share it with others. Be happy in it. Now.

And, forever.

Hold peace as a flower for a holy union.

See everyone as belonging to the One they are.

Practice "Mu."

Nothing special, no exception.

You don't have to say a prayer. You are prayer.

Only be that, what you are, Amen!

Old roads

I don't know. Never have. Still don't. Have no expectations to.

Summa, for String Orchestra, by Arvo Part (b. 1935) plays followed by Koyaanisquatsi by Philip Glass. They are formations of cloud in a damp sky on a Thursday morning. Coming and going like everything else in this ephemeral world. Like this moment of bare awareness called my name and soon to be a forgotten memory in a sudden silence.

I am glad to know this.

Come to say goodbye,
We sit for a while
By the sandy creek.
On far roads,
You hold out an empty bowl;
Deep in mountains,
Walk on fallen flowers.
Having no master, you
Puzzle out Zen on your own;
Observing strict prosody,
Your poems merit praise.
This going-away
Has no circumstantial cause;
A solitary cloud
Has no fixed home.
- Chia Tao (779-843)

In class last night we talked to each other about 'ahimsa' (non-harm) and defenselessness

My brothers, you were called, as you know, to liberty; but be careful, or this liberty will provide an opening for self-indulgence. Serve one another, rather, in works of love, since the whole of the Law is summarised in a single command: Love your neighbour as yourself.
(-- Mid-morning reading (Terce), Galatians 5:13-14)

When I finish watching the film Alamar (directed by Pedro Gonzolez-Rubio, 2009) the silence goes deeper as sun now shines into dooryard. Two dogs snooze, one on sofa, one on rug. I am taken by mere noticing. In extra but deleted scene a hermit crab on sandy ground in portable shell decides to move as young boy discovers with father's words the notion of finding home and carrying home with you. It is, for me, the theme of movie, left out.

Then a dialogue between Jorge and his father figure Matraca:

Jorge: Me neither, I drink my coffee every night before going to bed
Matraca: Me too, when I'm with my buddies we always have coffee. But we drink it during daytime
Jorge: With the old guys
Matraca: With my buddies, the young guys
Jorge: What do you mean by young guys. Are they your age. If they are your age than that's not young anymore. You have lived many spring times, you're not that young any more
Matraca: Well, I'm still young at heart. I don't feel old...
Jorge: One thing is to feel and another is to be old
Matraca: - like some guys who feel old. Not me. The only thing that's old are the roads... and we're still on them
(from film, Alamar)

Yes.

It's true.

We're still on the road.

delicious / so sweet

The white Border Collie loves his red geodesic ball, running from front room to dining room with green tennis ball in mouth to pursue and return by fancy footwork like a reincarnated soccer star doing time in Maine for being red carded in a World Cup second half run on goal.

The sage sees how to stop clinging
While all others find this very hard.
If you can see through joy and sorrow,
Then you too will glimpse the great peace.
- Perfection of Wisdom

Perhaps one of our endearing qualities is the way we respond to heartfelt occasions of ordinary activity. Like the way I imagine the dog marvels at my ability to pick up the red ball, lift arm over shoulder, and toss it. He must be thinking I am a reincarnated goalie surveying the field from crease ready to feed midfielder a new opportunity to dance his way through obstacles to find someone downfield to pass to.

Like the note of the New Jersey doctor to his wife of a morning containing all we need to know of love:

This Is Just to Say

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold

(--Poem by Wm Carlos Williams)

The red ball rolls under the rocking chair with a heart carved into it bought for the elderly European woman who knew the value of apology and missing fruit.

don't wish; do

What do I wish for?

"What you don't wish for yourself, don't do to others."
(--Confucius, in The Analects)

Well wishes, all around!

Nothing; but...

We do not "meet" God.

We attain nothing but God.

Love it! Dontcha?

helping one another cross

If not for joy with joy, then, what?

Natural Curiosity

Take time to be with something you love in nature that brings out your natural curiosity and delight, It may be a wild iris, the shimmering luminescence of water in a stream, the patterns and colors of a butterfly's wing. Let yourself be drawn to it. Engage your senses. Are you touched by the sense of wonder?
(- Mark Coleman, "A Breath of Fresh Air")

Six of us gathered for Friday Evening Conversation, a surprising number all of a sudden, to consider the language of David Abram. Eleven of us gathered that morning in prison to pronounce a new alphabet of spirituality for those of us who feel their old one moribund. The night before twenty of us gathered in Rockland Public Library to watch and reflect on the film "Welcome" directed by Phillippe Lioret. The film touches.

RP: You used the phrase “strange world order,” could you elaborate?
PL: It’s strange and so wrong that government’s can simply dictate where and when people can travel. Governments talk about illegals and aliens but weren’t the English aliens when they took over Australia?
If you’re walking down the street and it’s raining on that side and sunny on the other, naturally you’d want to cross over to get from the rain. It’s obvious. Why can’t people escaping war and looking for a better life be allowed to do so? The division of the world is too straight, too closed in. Maybe it’s a romantic vision that people should be able travel and live where they like, but it is a vision we should have.
(--from An interview with Philippe Lioret, director of Welcome, By Richard Phillips 17 April 2010) http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/apr2010/lior-a17.shtml

Awareness crosses the street as it gazes on light crossing the street. I am a street person longing for where I am crossing.

On the Sunny Side of the Street

Walked with no one and talked with no one
And I had nothing but shadows
Then one morning you passed
And I brightened at last
Now I greet the day and complete the day
With the sun in my heart
All my worry blew away
When you taught me how to say

Grab your coat and get your hat
Leave your worry on the doorstep
Just direct your feet
To the sunny side of the street
Can't you hear a pitter-pat?
And that happy tune is your step
Life can be so sweet
On the sunny side of the street

I used to walk in the shade
With those blues on parade
But I'm not afraid
This Rover crossed over

If I never have a cent
I'd be rich as Rockefeller
Gold dust at my feet
On the sunny side of the street
(Lyrics by: MC HUGH, JIMMY/FIELDS, DOROTHY)

The traffic in our thoughts can inhibit us from stepping off the curb. Often what is underfoot eludes us even as we are stepping along it. Our words are often blinders over our eyes and we've forgotten the feeling cane for our walking.

Buddha is Sanskrit for what you call aware, miraculously aware. Responding, perceiving, arching your brows, blinking your eyes, moving your hands and feet, it's all your miraculously aware nature. And this nature is the mind. And the mind is the buddha. And the buddha is the path. And the path is zen. But the word zen is one that remains a puzzle to both mortals and sages. Seeing your nature is zen. Unless you see your nature, it's not zen.
- Bodhidharma (d. 533)

Joy is stumbling alongside us as we make our way through streets of dim awareness. It offers it's arm. Cobblestones uneven and roughshod unbalance us. Take joy's arm. Steady your rolling gate with loving assistance. Long for early release or sensible solutions to puzzling journeys.

All I have is the conversation.

Turning with another or several anothers to look within, to look across, to look through what is here or there.

We are merely individuals with arms and feet. We are not dangerous.

We help one another cross. It is an often difficult passage from here to here, from sightless wandering to sighted wondering to insightful blundering where fools trip over crazy wisdom and skim their needs.

Safely.