There was (nor is there) no answer.

Feel anything yet? It's November. Saints and souls, spooks and sprites, along with desperate polling for presidential candidates.

Four Birds 

“Wake to the sun,” the rooster croaked,
First bird of the day. The world, light-flecked,
Chiselled its lineaments into form.
Where was all that fine light coming from? 

“Trance at the wonder,” the second sang.
Whose five dry notes urged the ongoing
Afternoon on. “Why wake and stir?”
It asked. And asked. There was no answer. 

“Live through the muddle.” That from the next one.
Not very helpful. It looked like rain,
Or fog in the offing. Twilight. Then
It sang again from an oak or pine. 

Silence. How I waited for the fourth!
Time was a negative dipped into its bath,
The dark a fixative that slowly made
For every windowpane its window shade. 

No messages arrived. No music bared
The soul for its penitence. Up the stairs
No hint of a footfall. The night passed.
“Croak by your hand,” said the crow at last. 

(Howard Moss, poem, “Four Birds” from New Selected Poems)

Someone thought no one would notice the absence of hope for the country.

I did.

And do.

No hope. Only faith. In what cannot be seen.

Mirror molecules feel not much more

There are not too many words left.

You can't imagine how useless words are in the possession of someone with nothing to say.

They won't stay.

They're going.

Apophatically.

With what once was called

God.

Rain

Rain.

Ra

i

n

As weather, ever-changing, comes to us...

May all find shelter from the storm

Meetingbrook's re-rendering of the Jesus prayer

Christ stillness of god
Emerge within us
Wisdom, kindness, and truth

...

Christ wisdom of god
Emerge within us
Stillness mercy and knowledge
...

Christ silence of god
Emerge within us
Mercy vision and service
...

Christ kindness of god
Emerge within us
Knowledge mercy and love
...

Christ vision of god
Emerge within us
Clarity kindness and sight

...

For we have forgotten our way...

Haiku, (for itself)

Moonlight in dooryard
No one asks: Do you trust it?
White glow on gravel

(wfh)

As it tumbles edge over edge

Mokugyo from Kyoto arrives with returning visitors to Japan.

Watch Iranian film after popcorn fire.

Adrienne Rich's poem 7/26/1968 drove the prison conversation today.

Alea jacta est!

Unconfining knowledge is itself holiness

We row the near empty outer harbor around Curtis Island with Rokie in bow of peapod.

Earlier we walk trails of Ragged Mountain engrossed with October rust, two dogs lumbering alongside.

At Thursday Evening Conversation talk of holiness and unconfined knowing.

I tell students for yesterday's midterms I'm not interested in them telling me what they know, but in their learning what they are thinking.

I'm grateful for those who massacre my egoistic fears.

I'm nearly alive when such gifts are extended.

Long, alternate voices

Wisdom via suffering -- the way of Greek tragedy.

And then Wednesday ends.

Nothing lasts forever

Insanity is temporary. Like words.

Now, love -- that's different.

It might be all there is, but many of us cannot see what is right before us.

Sometimes, insanity is what there is...for the moment.

When that is true, only the truth makes sense, even if insane.

Bob Schieffer said it best: "We all love teachers."

One of the two new residents of meetingbrook.

Then the second.

They're not planning to vote.

They ignored the debate.

Not me. I'll vote. I watched the televised commercial for political maneuvers.

Where were the other candidates?

Robert Creeley wrote: "One thing / done, the / rest follows."

 "Where things go to is where they come from." (Shinzen Young)

That sums it nicely!

There seems to be a general impression that the ultimate goal of mindfulness practice is to be able to stay focused on the breath. I sometimes parody that notion with the slogan “Real meditators are able to come back to the breath.” Actually, if you insist that I give you something to always come back to, I would say “Real meditators are able to come back to ‘gone.’” 
(--from "The Power of Gone," by Shinzen Young, Tricycle, http://www.tricycle.com/practice/power-gone)

Suddenly, back pain is gone. To where? Who knows. When and if it returns I'll be too distracted to ask it.

Visiting patients in Pen Bay Hospital last evening reminds me of "gone." One is near gone. Another quietly beams as she says she has no idea when, but at 91 and with congestive heart failure, she smiles that there's not much to do about what is happening.

She's right, of course. It is "what is" happening.

After two and a half hours of standing by beds speaking and listening, it was time to go. The walk through doors out across parking lot in foggy autumn mist was the stuff of dreams. Everyone is gone in the passing of the evening and everyone comes along with me turning toward Rockport and Camden.

We
  are never
     alone. 

No
  one is
    with us. 

Returning
  to the(e)
    source. 

{wfh}

Get the 'f' into place

"Be(lie)f" read the speaker's tee-shirt.

"Be life" I would have thought would be better antidote to belief.

Learning to read "and" right

This word is
truth.
And this word is
alive.
And what is alive is always
changing.

(Just Friday morning prison talk?)

Yeah, truth is just like this -- and that's the truth!

First, see no harm

Desmond Tutu said we are because we belong.

To be is to belong.

What is love? Love is when we recognize connection is ultimate reality. And compassion flows recognizing suffering.

First we must see reality as it is.

Hermeneutic of wholeness

Virgin birth is wholeness from wholeness. Nothing is taken away.

No part is separate.

“Not for a moment dare we succumb to the illusion that an archetype can be finally explained and disposed of. Even the best attempts at explanation are only more or less successful translations into another metaphorical language. (Indeed, language itself is only an image.) The most we can do is to dream the myth onwards and give it a modern dress. And whatever explanation or interpretation does to it, we do to our own souls as well, with corresponding results for our own well-being. The archetype -- let us never forget this -- is a psychic organ present in all of us. A bad explanation means a correspondingly bad attitude to this organ, which may thus be injured. But the ultimate sufferer is the bad interpreter himself. (-- C. G. Jung, “The Psychology of the Child Archetype” in Sacred Narrative, Readings in the Theory of Myth, p.253, Ed. by Alan Dundes)

Be careful with myths.

They are your story.

I'm game

 It's obvious, the structures aren't holding. We are learning that death is as near as the next breath. I've decided to enjoy this present breath. And this one. And this.

When people are on the point of drowning, all they care for
is their lives.  But as soon as they get ashore, they ask, "Where
is my umbrella?"  Wisdom, in life, consists in not asking for the umbrella.
-- John Wu

Besides the noble art of getting things done,
there is the noble art of leaving things undone.
The wisdom of life consists in the elimination of nonessentials.
-- Lin Yutang

The foolish reject what they see, not what they think;
the wise reject what they think, not what they see. . . .
Observe things as they are and don't pay attention to other people.
--Huang-Po

Everyone will now let go of structures that no longer serve well the people once dependent on them. Look around. Do you see someone in need? Help them.

If there is a god, that god will be in the middle of anything that helps people through their difficulties.

If there is a you and me, we will be in the middle of god touching with healing those suffering, those longing for you and god and me.

Be a good sport.

Let light and healing be the process of your life, my life, and god's life.

Make no effort; be that which is what you are

Two young and small cats come to meetingbrook to see if we can live together. Two older dogs watch warily the wary watching of them by the cats. The two humans living here watch carefully the initial watching one with each other.

O God, enlarge within us
the sense of fellowship with all living things, and especially with our brothers and
sisters the animals to whom you gave the earth as their home together with us. We remember with shame that we have dominated over them in the past with ruthless cruelty,
so that the voice of the earth, which should have risen to
you in song, has been instead a groan in pain. Teach us that they do not live only for our benefit, but for themselves and for you, and that they love the sweetness of life as much as we do.”
— A Prayer of Basil the Great

We'll read from Ramesh Balsakar at table practice after cabin practice. He'll suggest that all there is is consciousness. Five words: Consciousness is all there is.

When the seeker doing the seeking finally asks, "Who cares?" -- that's when something begins happening.

I've been reading heidegger's hidden sources, East Asian Influences on His Work, by Reinhard May (1989), trans by Graham Parker (1996). "Only the destruction of one's own being or of the world as a whole is something total for the human being." (Heidegger, p.84)

Ramesh puts it in the hands of "God."

The ego will dissolve. No effort will assist.

Cat will be cat. Dog, dog. Human, human. God, god.

Dusk comes at 6pm.

Time to sit.

Doing what we see fit

It's not as easy as you might think. Wiping out evil doers was a quaint phrase of simple minds that understand only their narrow view.

“If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?”
--Alexander Solzhenitsyn

In Wohnkuche, who is sipping tea, pouring coffee, toasting bread, buttering cranberry-pecan slices, basking in sunshine, laughing at our foolishness, smiling at our loving kindness, appreciating the buddhist sangha and the christian community after morning sitting?

When realizing mind you see that buddhahood is not a place which you must reach.
Since it is a self-existing purity, there is no need to cultivate it.
It is experienced simply as a natural presence …
There is nothing you need to realize apart from it, so settle this issue by realizing it.
(-- Padmasambhava, the ‘Lotus-born’)

Two kittens come to meetingbrook from local shelter today.

We can only open heart to come to understand what is there.

And choose to do what we see fit.

No other place

There is
No time --
Like the
Present

And all good, peace

Iggy visits a brief spell yesterday. This Franciscan has been in Bolivia for forty years. We studied together (played ping pong, tennis, and pool) fifty years ago when we were younger men.

He leaves notecards made by indigenous Bolivian women with real flowers for us to sell or distribute. They are lovely.

He leaves us with embracing blessing in chapel/zendo.

It is good to be with such sweet Franciscan connection spanning so many years and so earthy a spirituality.

If you ask...

I like Biden over Ryan.

If you don't ask, I'll not say.

Mencius said human nature is good

You are what is right.

So am I.

Now, to be what we are!

The concentric relationships tell a tale

Confucius worried no leader in the China of his day would listen to him.

They didn't.

Today we worry the cosmos is not benefitting from man.

It isn't.

❖ “A 14-year-old Pakistan activist who won international acclaim for speaking out for girls denied education under the Taliban was shot and seriously wounded Tuesday on her way home from school”. She is Malala Yousafzai, 9th grader, riding on the school bus when she was shot, one bullet lodged near her spine. A 7th grade girl on the bus was shot in the leg.(--Firedoglake News Desk, http://news.firedoglake.com/

As the human so the cosmos.

Uh oh!

Soon, we'll see...

Imagination.

What the mind sees before any appearance.

Imagine.

What is.

To be.

Seen.

bodhi svaha

She wanted to be in the waters off Camden.

Now she is.

Form is emptiness, emptiness form.

Gassho, Lizzie!

Wait up, there's someone lingering behind and beyond and bewith.

The ashes went into the sea. Heart Sutra chanted. Bell Chant rung.

Light and Bodhisattva service, respect and gratitude as the formless woman's remains went below waves.

Saskia, Jory, and Mark step off Schooner Heron before the rain poured down.

Faith is trust in your experience

The Buddha touched the earth. The earth was his witness when illusions were dispelled and his mind shown through with clear light.

Mara, the tempter, was silenced with earth's eloquent affirming agreement -- this Buddha is indeed free.

At prison today Sonny said if we hadn't done the three year independent study together after his near-death experience 20+ years ago, he would today most likely be in a mental institution. Rokie was leaning against his legs.

Some days feel just right.

Today has been one of them.

Rokpa born on St Francis Day

Five years ago

Giovanni Francesco d'Assisi - Va Bene!

Sri Aurobindo (1872-1950) thought that ignorance was tightening around knowledge, compressing and shrinking the sphere of knowledge with wide and suffocating squeeze.

He wasn't pessimistic about this. He thought it was the expected contraction which will lead to an extraordinary expansion effecting a shift toward supra-mental insight and truth building upon clarity and truth.

But, the interim closing-in and choking intentional ignorance is daunting. From presidential kabuki debate to prevarication system-wide in institutional solipsism spreading in corporate structures, we are looking to the metaphorical falling sky with cringing worry aliens have dropped into a no longer recognizable horizon.

I could look away. Or look within. Let me think about it.

A Disillusionment of Ten O'Clock  

The houses are haunted 

By white night-gowns. 

None are green, 

Or purple with green rings, 

Or green with yellow rings, 

Or yellow with blue rings. 

None of them are strange, 

With socks of lace 

And beaded ceintures. 

People are not going 

To dream of baboons and periwinkles. 

Only, here and there, an old sailor, 

Drunk and asleep in his boots, 

Catches Tigers

In red weather.  

(--Poem by Wallace Stevens)

There's the word, 'ceinture' -- a reminiscence of sacerdotal vesting when as an altar boy I would hold out braided rope for priest to cinch liturgical vestment costume to perform ritual of death and resurrection, the distribution of sustaining sacrament in bewildering metaphorical solemnity.

Priest after priest backed away from vesting table over decades of disappointment and disillusionment. Ceintures hung from hooks in closets long after anointed hands ceased reaching in to garb the girth of a distracted church whose hosts and wine began to stale in autumn pale.

But there is always Francis. 

Open-doored and earthen-hued, Francis, like Siddhartha Gautama, touched the earth, tasted lack, and called us back.

Back to what? (This revelation might help my hurting back.)

Back to Being. Being here. As earth. Is here. As it is. Heaven as earth.

With as much kindness as befits.

The great miracle is to walk the earth.

With all that is...

accompanying. For now.

Until,  no...

More...

seeker of truth 

follow no path
all paths lead where 

truth is here 

(Poem by e.e.cummings)

Would you throw your vote if you knew it wouldn't be counted?

Do you take this man to be your democrat-chosen candidate?
Some do.

Do you take this other man to be your republican-chosen candidate?
Some do.

Where are the green, libertarian, or justice candidates?
They are excluded.

I now pronounce this debate to be too narrow and too stylized.

You may now kiss off the pretended theatre piece simulating open democracy.

Don't bother with the rings. They're already in bed with each other.

Alone with my own sound

Bard Owl repeatedly asks his question in dark mountain wood.

I translate it according to my diffuse misunderstanding.

"Who speaks for you?"

Everything, Mr. Owl, and everyone.

But I am very often not able to hear, deaf with inattentive inanity.

Hence I prattle idiocy left to myself.

And cannot bear what I hear.

I don't want to think it's too late; do you?

I've been thinking about 9/11.

About thermite, controlled demolition, and whether the American people are worthy and capable of hearing the hitherto unexplained causes of the devastating destruction occurring that day.

I think we are. Worthy and capable. Some disagree. It is a mindset. Fixed? Or, growth?

Look at your mind. I will mine. Let's see what we are capable of seeing.

Truth, it is said, can be terribly unsettling. A startling awakening.

Untruth, it is said, can put us into a deep and untroubled sleep.

Today, I have been chloroform saturated, falling into soporific incredulity.

I'd rather be properly informed, being elevated into clear and unadulterated transparency.

Science, engineering, physics, chemistry, and reasonable hypotheses and evidence lead to consequential though unproven conclusions.

I'll start there.

Architects and Engineers, 9/11 Explosive Evidence, Experts Speak Out
http://m.youtube.com/#/watch?v=YW6mJOqRDI4&desktop_uri=%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DYW6mJOqRDI4

Ignorance: Some days the broken breaks your heart

Avidya.

6,572 U.S. service members have died in Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom    http://apps.washingtonpost.com/national/fallen/

 Avidya.

At least 132,000 civilians have died from 10 years of war in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to a new study by Brown university. And that’s a conservative estimate. http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/06/afghanistan-iraq-wars-killed-132000-civilians-report-says/

Avidya

Avidya is like a deeply rooted tree with four thick branches. The first branch is called asmita, or Ego. This is the part of us that seeks its own interests. It considers itself better than others, is bruised when it does not get its own way, and generally causes us to identify with this earthly body and the life it is living. It has no wider perspective than that. 

The second branch is called raga and is best translated as Desire or Attachment. This is the part that constantly wants what it does not have. It desires what it does not really need and seeks to accumulate merely for the sake of it. It makes us unsatisfied and causes us to continually compare ourselves unfavorably with others. If we are wealthy, we are unhappy because somebody else is wealthier still. And so on.... 

The third branch is called dvesa or Refusal. This is like the recoil response. Whatever negative experiences we have had in life make us afraid of repeating them again in case the same result occurs. It can make us reject people, situations and possibilities that just might cause us pain again. In one person, it may be the fear of forming relationships with the opposite sex. In another, it may be a fear of public speaking as a result of negative childhood experiences.

The fourth and last branch on the tree of Avidya is called abhinivesa or Fear. These are specifically fears that are not caused by previous experience. For example, we may fear change, or growing old, or that we may lose everything we worked so hard to earn. In other words, things we may never have experienced before.

Avidya, in all its subtle forms, works within us constantly to root us in our habitual ways and make improvement difficult or impossible. The more we indulge Avidya, the stronger it becomes. Eventually, we feel that we are no longer the doer of these things; they simply happen to us. A person can attract one disastrous relationship after another, or continually experience uncontrollable rage under certain stimuli and feel that it is nothing directly to do with them. It is just bad luck. The person fails to see that there is only one person responsible for everything that happens!

 http://www.adishakti.org/_/avidya.htm

Ignorance, Avidya, is the cause of suffering and pain. 

No ant realizes its origin

At the end of his life he craves tuna fish.

That, and the knowledge one person, alone, learning with compassion, sets a tone for reincarnation many will find soothing.

The Tibetan Lama gathers to himself four lineages. The homeless nobody, beginning a tuna on whole wheat, offers bite to companion.

What follows is a world of incalculable understanding suddenly streaming -- a five minute window where eyes look around for the source of such sweet and fleeting joy.

His death is no battle. Not even a chore. It is a final crumb falling to ground vaguely scented with distant sea.

Where did you say to meet you

I hear a man I know suffers a new condition.

Elsewhere I hear it said that when mind conforms to the conditions of the body there is peace.

Origin, it is said, is where everything abides in creative abandon.

We'll meet there, I submit, at origin.

From one to one; to one as one

It's different from not believing in God in the sense people mean when they ask if you believe in God.

You could say I don't believe in God, but that's not it.

I don't believe in belief.

You could say I dwell in God the same way fish dwell in the sea and earthworms in soil.

Belief has nothing to do with it.

When someone asks, I pray for them. I pray -- not to God -- but, within God.

Ah, you might be tempted to say, then you do believe in God. No, not so. (Mu?)

I call upon what is the reality of their being to be the wholeness which is their true origin and home.

Return, I pray, to the home you are before birth after death during life.

That which is by any other, certainly by no other, name -- the one we call from and to and as -- God.

Good health to you, my friend and friends!

However and wherever and whoever -- you are.

Wholly at home.

Where, then, would it be?

When is a backache not a backache?
When it's not in your back.

Poems are sweet scripture

Not in a garden. Not on a crowded avenue.

One's eyes are for you.

Millions of stars go by.

You are here. And so am I.

We are so fortunate!

The song said: "I want to know what love is. I want you to show me."

Love is the quality of being.

If you are, you are love.

Show up. Be as you are.

Manifest one another.

Is it time for breakfast or supper? She asked.

In the hospital the women suffer the first day of autumn with iv's, pain meds, Alzheimer's, and pneumonia. I stand by beds and talk with them. About blue jeeps, wild turkeys outside window, deceased husbands, good children, and the way things used to be.

It is Saturday evening. They are gracious.

One person at a time.

Just that

In prison today, zazen.

In true freedom.

Then, around the table, conversation.

To be -- or not -- to be. This is not the question.

All mythology, the man said, has its origin in the belief there is something behind this visible appearing world.

Behind, in a quasi spatial sense. And behind, in a quasi temporal historical sense.

An invisibility. An emptiness devoid of any separative distinctions or descriptions. Just as the Tao that can be spoken of is not the true Tao. And the God spoken of in the Jewish scriptures is a no-name God.

I bicycle to town on borrowed bike. Then row the harbor. I cycle home. 

Investigate everything. I suspect we find everything incredible. Then, don't believe anything, investigate it. And when you alight on something you feel you can hold on to -- drop it, let it go, investigate the release.

I will say this: the Open is the only non-place to be.

The question is: what is seen by the no-self non-dual whole-sight?

Only you...

Provide what is said next.

Goodnight, darling

The papyrus suggests Jesus had a wife.
The miracle of your mind isn’t that you can see the world as it is. It’s that you can see the world as it isn’t.” (Kathryn Schulz)Mozel Tov!

Emptiness is no views

What goes round is what is round.

See it; have no view.

It is seeing you.

Not a single body which is not me

Some realizations are a complete surprise.

“The whole universe in all ten quarters is the whole body of a mendicant monk.” (--from, Shōbōgenzō: On the Whole Universe in All Ten Directions  http://www.thezensite.com/ZenTeachings/Dogen_Teachings/Shobogenzo/058jippo.pdf

Some, more surprising than that.

EDITORIAL 

Death at Guantánamo Bay 

Published: September 15, 2012

Adnan Farhan Abdul Latif, a Yemeni citizen and one of the first detainees sent to Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, in January 2002, died there earlier this month. There is no official autopsy report yet, but in his decade in prison he had gone on hunger strikes and made several suicide attempts.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/16/opinion/sunday/death-at-guantanamo-bay.html?_r=1&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

I died this month in Guantanamo.

Do not send flowers.

Do not cry.

Rather, wonder why you, my friends, think you are still alive.

Look around. Learn from what you see.

As for me, I would prefer to look at what is...

 here...with no illusions.

“In the whole universe in all ten quarters, there is not one single person who is not the True Self.”  (Shobogenzo, Op cit.)

Let day-old coffee and fresh cream of wheat be your teachers

Morning appears as undifferentiated flow of September brook and slanted sunlight.

The death of expectation blends with an absence of belief in anything other than green silence with open mind.

Someone comes, sits in zendo, leaves. Tires roll over rutted stones onto Barnestown Road.

I abjure all but this unfolding extension of what is revealing itself.

I am

Passing

Away

Into

Breakfast.

I can't see DC from my porch

Somebody will calculate the upside to anti-American turmoil in the Arab speaking world. It will have to do with oil or votes or getting the stranger out of the White House. There's joy behind closed doors among the plotting class.

Flotsam from Bush and Bush years are raising glasses to the brilliance of their time in office. Money managers prime for Monday markets. Press releases are readied for distribution.

There is a corner that has been turned.

No one pretends any longer venality is not the operative motif. Stud and slut stand smiling at their front door saying goodnight to Johns and Jills sliding into limousines fresh from brandy and coffee laced with cynicism and smug retro-rancor.

Here in Maine it grows chilly.

Back hurts.

Delusion.

Hurts.

If Christ met Krishna...

What would they talk about?

Let's suggest an alternate question: If you met yourself, how would the greeting sound?

There is only one sound in the cosmos.

Do you hear it?

The shipwrecked, said Jose Ortega y Gasset, listen to them!

Rilke's Fourth Duino Elegy for conversation tonight, completing a two week reading and reflecting.

Who’ll show a child just as it is? Who’ll place it within its constellation, with the measure
of distance in its hand? Who’ll make its death
from grey bread, that grows hard,—or leave it there, within the round mouth, like the choking core
of a sweet apple? . . . . . . Minds of murderers are easily divined. But this, though: death,
the whole of death,—even before life’s begun, to hold it all so gently, and be good:
this is beyond description!
(--final lines, translated from German by J.B. Leishman and Stephen Spender)

Refusing the bitter, metaphor of Jesus refusing the gall on the cross, preferring to receive the offer of the pure event.

Nothing added; nothing taken away.

As fire listens with us to dusk and darkness under sky on earth with each other.

“The man with the clear head is the man who frees himself from those fantastic “ideas” [about his own character and identity] and looks life in the face, realizes that everything in it is problematic, and feels himself lost. And this is the simple truth – that to live is to feel oneself lost - he who accepts it has already begun to find himself, to be on firm ground. Instinctively, as do the shipwrecked, he will look round for something to which to cling, and that tragic, ruthless glance, absolutely sincere, because it is a question of his salvation, will cause him to bring order into the chaos of his life. These are the only genuine ideas; the ideas of the shipwrecked.”

(--Jose Ortega y Gasset, from, The Revolt of the Masses)

Seeing from every side.

From within.

Everything.

Perfectly; as it is!

What is the sound of one bicycling monk returning to the road?

Click, click, click...

...gate gate pāragate pārasaṃgate bodhi svāhā!

Thank you, 감사합니다 (kamsahamnida), Daeung Sunim, for gracing us with your visit!

Itself; changing

Soup and send off.

We are all going to suffer our losses. How we deal with these losses is what makes all the difference. For it is not what happens to us that determines our character, our experience, our karma, and our destiny, but how we relate to what happens.
- Lama Surya Das, "Practicing With Loss"

It's about impermanence.

Change itself.

Does a dog have Buddha-Nature, or...

...the nature to play stick-throw with visiting Buddhist monk? 

Rokpa and Cody play with Daeung Sunim after morning sitting in chapel/zendo. They sat in silence with us, claims Rokie, now the pay-off ... run, play, run!

The morning is quiet with remembrance of another September 11. We listen to the resonance of calls from place to place. The calls ask: Are you listening?

One monk makes his pilgrimage of soul through the souls of others he meets bicycling through countries, provinces, states, and other more subtle borders.

I like the phrase, "to connect with awareness." Perhaps it is suggesting that it is not 'awareness' we are aiming for, but "connect with." Beyond that, this "connect-with" might actually be what awareness is.

Thus, connect-with is awareness.

Completely (ok, even partially) connecting-with is the practice of awareness.

Awareness might not be awareness of something or someone. Rather, awareness is being-connected, whether or not we are aware of it.

On the mountain top one thatched hut, Thirty li from roads.  Knock on the door: no disciple to answer;  Look in: only a table for tea.  The firewood cart is covered;  Have you gone fishing in the autumn stream?  I look among the pools, but miss you;  I try but fail to pay you my respects.  Grass shines in the fresh rain;  Pines murmur at evening windows.  Here at this moment a harmony,  Profound and unrivaled;  The self completely cleansed,  The heart, the ear.  Although there is no guest or host as such,  I'm able to intuit your pure thought.  Purpose fulfilled, I head back down the mountain.  No need now to wait for you.  

--Ch’iu Wei (8th c)

We greet the greeting of the calls, the visiting monk, the September sun and breeze, and all the lovely eyes and feet visiting along this mountain!

Resting

Korean Buddhist bicycling monk sleeps in Morning Call Yurt this chill night with down comforters.

We go for volunteer training in southern Maine prison tonight.

Advaita teacher said at library this noon: "Meditation is allowing what is to be without resistance."

Staying awake all the way home on dark roads is great gift.

Bicycle, after over five thousand miles, (so far), rests in barn.

Thou shalt remain; nameless

There's nothing out there anymore.
It's all in the middle of no place between two things not there.

Still, the chicken soup is tasty. Fresh bread also. Bishop's cake of a piece.

It is curious, this sense of the momentous as merely a momentary mirage. And yet, gratefulness. For all of it. The pathetic. And the privileged.

To be here with it.

As it takes place.

As who we are.

Visiting patience in hospital beds

Bankai's zen at practice this morning.

Unboring.

Tonight, tropical moisture wrapped in eerie wind; crickets reminisce.

Take your time

We sat a spell in a room with the place Norman had lived his bodily life. Gone beyond, now, body left remaining, his wife and another sat with us as we sat with his passing.

Profound bow to once and always.

Time takes what nothing else wants-- formless presence.

Presiding Old Ama

Love, ancient and true, present and new, be with us, and with our kin and kindred.

Amen!

Let the voters register and vote!

And may the best in man and woman see light and gaze with care on it!

It's academic...

Two.
Many.
Syllabi.

I don't know; you?

 Divine Ground, vibrating breath.

The Vedas contain several creation hymns, some of which describe the universe as a great egg from which everything comes (Rig Veda 10:121). Other hymns describe it as the product of a grand architect (Rig Veda 10:82). In the creation hymn below, on a literal level, the author depicts the original state of the universe as a formless void of neither existence nor non-existence. Through heat, the one primordial existence arose. From this, desire emerged which, in turn, generated mind. The author concludes, though, that we can never know the exact process of creation since no one was around to witness it, including the gods. Even the highest divine creative force may or may not know how it all started.

Then there was neither the non-existent nor existent. There was no realm of air, no sky beyond it. What was concealed, and where? And what gave shelter? Was there any water of unfathomed depth?There was no death then, nor was there any immortality. There was no torch of day and night. There was that One, which breathed mindlessly by its own nature. But apart from it there was nothing whatsoever.First there was only darkness concealed in darkness. All was undiscriminated water. That One, existing in a formless void, was born by the great power of heat.After that, Desire arose in the beginning — desire, the primal seed and germ of Mind. Sages who searched with their heart discovered the existent’s kingship in the non-existent.Across this they extend their dividing line: what was above it then, and what below it? There were originators, and there were mighty forces. Free action was here and energy was up there.Who truly knows and who can here declare from where it was born and from where this creation comes? The gods came later than the production of this world. Who knows then from where it first came into being?He, the first origin of this creation, whether he formed it all or did not form it; whose eye controls this world in highest heaven, he truly knows it, or perhaps he does not know. [From the Rig Veda, 10:129]

 http://www.utm.edu/staff/jfieser/vita/teaching/eastphil.htm

Exhalation; great stillness.

Over hills; and daily

Listening to Bill Moyers and Joseph Campbell in my ear.

The world is more unknown than felt.

Wonder wanders without destination.

God, it is said, is good!

Following itself

Maybe I live in 2032 and only seem to be living in 2012. Computer simulation will befuddle us all.

We read Elizabeth Johnson at Sunday Evening Practice. We consider the continuous, the cruciform, and the promise embedded in panentheistic divine reality.

I could be living in 564BCE and think I am in 12th century Assisi. Perhaps I am the 85th word of the Tao Te Ching imagining I am a phrase in William Carlos William's "Asphodel, That Greeny Flower."

I'm not now
Nor
Have I
Ever
Been certain
Of anything.

Wave and particle, wave and tide, wave and say goodbye -- it all befuddles.

Same river different country, same shoe different step, becoming is the novelty/vitality of consciousness.

Who do I say I am?

Don't ask.

I can't be trusted to know how to answer.

The chicken soup followed by peach blueberry cake was delicious.

Practice follows itself perfectly.

This is, and

1st day of new year.

In hospital for visiting tonight.

Immortal means no time. Which means no death. Which means no birth.

I don't know why abortion is such a big deal. Is not being born the same as being unborn?

I build boardwalk toward new yurt.  I trust you realize the futility of trying to make sense of what republicans are talking about.

Then will come the democrats.

It doesn't matter. Really, it doesn't.

Just this is; nothing else is.

Joyful duration

For forty years

The lad

Has been son.

Perfect saying

Francis de Sales said: "Ask for nothing and refuse nothing."

Log, zzzs

Building boardwalk leading to center path up to yurt.

Vipassana meditator visits for Tuesday Practice.

Finish generic conversation brochure for prison(s), hermitage, nursing home, and hospital.

Sleep.

Plaintive

I'm sure there's something good to be said about political conventions.

There must be.

No?

O eternal Truth, true Love, and beloved Eternity, you are my God, and for you I sigh day and night. As I first began to know you, you lifted me up and showed me that, while that which I might see exists indeed, I was not yet capable of seeing it. Your rays beamed intensely on me, beating back my feeble gaze, and I trembled with love and dread. I knew myself to be far away from you in a region of unlikeness, and I seemed to hear your voice from on high: “I am the food of the mature: grow, then, and you shall eat me. You will not change me into yourself like bodily food; but you will be changed into me”.
(-- Augustine of Hippo, in The Confessions)

There's bound to be...

Something.

Nothing, more, to say

I can't tell the future. There is no future. I can't recall the past. It's gone. But I can see, now.

Call it what you will. The infinite possibilities and potential permutations, combinations, and calculations of the net of now presenting everything and everywhere in its true context, that context you and me aware, without  question or explanation, as just this, here, in all its inclusive and idiorhythmIc transitory hide-n-seek manifestations.

Notch the arrow of emptiness 

To shoot the hawk of ultimate meaning;

If you're not right on target, 

You will be deceived by this barbarian monk. 

-- Fugai Ekun (1568-1654)

Meanwhile the men of the grand old party become more and more stupid about vagina, womb, sperm, egg, consenting relationality, and offspring. They are making women into body parts and legislative language that men own and operate.

Let me, despite what I've said, tell you the future.

Leonard Cohen said it starkly: "I've seen the future, brother: it is murder." (--from, The Future, song by L.C) 

Abortion and rape, they figure, are isolated and a-relational events having nothing to do with a woman, except that she just happens to be in attendance to their enactment.

Not-being born and Bankai's "unborn" are curious considerations in a world mind-set of dualism and linear historicity. We're tied, it seems, to notions of "born" and "died" -- the words populate all our documents and obituaries.

What if we saw things differently? The physics and spirituality of appearance and disappearance, form and emptiness, energy and matter and the transformation of them -- the understanding of unfolding and multidimensional synchronicity interweaving through our consciousness the variegated multiplicity of an integral and real universe -- the net of now -- beguiles.

A deranged or, even, barbarian monk would have nothing more to say.

Mind before thinking is the unborn

Close the gate. There's a hermit lurking!

The fuel in the tea brazier is burnt out,
So I collect pine needles;
The fields of medicinal plants are empty,
So I cut vegetable roots.
Naturally dull, I've forgotten Zen activities,
My gate is darkened at noon by
The shade of ancient trees.
White clouds impart a sense of peace
To my Zen meditation,
Green grasses suffice to make a rug for my guests.
What I have collected is a hundred years
Of emptiness.
- Isshi Bunshu (1608-1646)

Emptiness, like enlightenment, is not what you think; it is!