Why else set here?

From John Milton, Paradise Lost, Fifth Book, an excerpt:

  THE ARGUMENT.—Morning approached, Eve relates to Adam her troublesome dream; he likes it not, yet comforts her: they come forth to their day labours: their morning hymn at the door of their bower. God, to render Man inexcusable, sends Raphael to admonish him of his obedience, of his free estate, of his enemy near at hand, who he is, and why his enemy, and whatever else may avail Adam to know. Raphael comes down to Paradise; his appearance described; his coming discerned by Adam afar off, sitting at the door of his bower; he goes out to meet him, brings him to his lodge, entertains him with the choicest fruits of Paradise, got together by Eve; their discourse at table. Raphael performs his massage, minds Adam of his state and of his enemy; relates, at Adam’s request, who that enemy is, and how he came to be so, beginning from his first revolt in Heaven, and the occasion thereof; how he drew his legions after him to the parts of the North, and there incited them to rebel with him, persuading all but only Abdiel, a seraph, who in argument dissuades and opposes him, then forsakes him.
 
 
NOW Morn, her rosy steps in the eastern clime
Advancing, sowed the earth with orient pearl,
When Adam waked, so customed; for his sleep
Was aerie light, from pure digestion bred,
And temperate vapours bland, which the only sound
        5
Of leaves and fuming rills, Aurora’s fan,
Lightly dispersed, and the shrill matin song
Of birds on every bough. So much the more
His wonder was to find unwakened Eve,
With tresses discomposed, and glowing cheek,
        10
As through unquiet rest. He, on his side
Leaning half raised, with looks of cordial love
Hung over her enamoured, and beheld
Beauty which, whether waking or asleep,
Shot forth peculiar graces; then, with voice
        15
Mild as when Zephyrus on Flora breathes,
Her hand soft touching, whispered thus:—“Awake,
My fairest, my espoused, my latest found,
Heaven’s last, best gift, my ever-new delight!
Awake! the morning shines, and the fresh field
        20
Calls us; we lose the prime to mark how spring
Our tended plants, how blows the citron grove,
What drops the myrrh, and what the balmy reed,
How Nature paints her colours, how the bee
Sits on the bloom extracting liquid sweet.”
        25
  Such whispering waked her, but with startled eye
On Adam; whom imbracing, thus she spake:—
  “O sole in whom my thoughts find all repose,
My glory, my perfection! glad I see
Thy face, and morn returned; for I this night
        30
(Such night till this I never passed) have dreamed,
If dreamed, not, as I oft am wont, of thee,
Works of day past, or morrow’s next design;
But of offence and trouble, which my mind
Knew never till this irksome night. Methought
        35
Close at mine ear one called me forth to walk
With gentle voice; I thought it thine. It said,
‘Why sleep’st thou, Eve? now is the pleasant time,
The cool, the silent, save where silence yields
To the night-warbling bird, that now awake
        40
Tunes sweetest his love-laboured song; now reigns
Full-orbed the moon, and, with more pleasing light,
Shadowy sets off the face of things—in vain,
If none regard. Heaven wakes with all his eyes;
Whom to behold but thee, Nature’s desire,
        45
In whose sight all things joy, with ravishment
Attracted by thy beauty still to gaze?
I rose as at thy call, but found thee not:
To find thee I directed then my walk;
And on, methought, alone I passed through ways
        50
That brought me on a sudden to the Tree
Of interdicted Knowledge. Fair it seemed,
Much fairer to my fancy than by day;
And, as I wondering looked, beside it stood
One shaped and winged like one of those from Heaven
        55
By us oft seen: his dewy locks distilled
Ambrosia. On that Tree he also gazed;
And, ‘O fair plant,’ said he, ‘with fruit surcharged,
Deigns none to ease thy load, and taste thy sweet,
Nor God nor Man? Is knowledge so despised?
        60
Or envy, or what reserve forbids to taste?
Forbid who will, none shall from me withhold
Longer thy offered good, why else set here?
This said, he paused not, but with ventrous arm
He plucked, he tasted. Me damp horror chilled
        65
At such bold words vouched with a deed so bold;
But he thus, overjoyed: ‘O fruit divine,
Sweet of thyself, but much more sweet thus cropt,
Forbidden here, it seems, as only fit
For gods, yet able to make gods of men!
        70
And why not gods of men, since good, the more
Communicated, more abundant grows,
The author not impaired, but honoured more?
Here, happy creature, fair angelic Eve!
Partake thou also: happy though thou art,
        75
Happier thou may’st be, worthier canst not be.
Taste this, and be henceforth among the gods
Thyself a goddess; not to Earth confined,
But sometimes in the Air; as we; sometimes
Ascend to Heaven, by merit thine, and see
        80
What life the gods live there, and such live thou.’
So saying, he drew nigh, and to me held,
Even to my mouth of that same fruit held part
Which he had plucked: the pleasant savoury smell
So quickened appetite that I, methought,
        85
Could not but taste. Forthwith up to the clouds
With him I flew, and underneath beheld
The Earth outstretched immense, a prospect wide
And various. Wondering at my flight and change
To this high exaltation, suddenly
        90
My guide was gone, and I, methought, sunk down,
And fell asleep; but, O, how glad I waked
To find this but a dream!” Thus Eve her night
Related, and thus Adam answered sad:—
  “Best image of myself, and dearer half,
        95
The trouble of thy thoughts this night in sleep
Affects me equally; nor can I like
This uncouth dream—of evil sprung, I fear;
Yet evil whence? In thee can harbour none,
Created pure. But know that in the soul
        100
Are many lesser faculties, that serve
Reason as chief. Among these Fancy next
Her office holds; of all external things,
Which the five watchful senses represent,
She forms imaginations, aerie shapes,
        105
Which Reason, joining or disjoining, frames
All what we affirm or what deny, and call
Our knowledge or opinion; then retires
Into her private cell when Nature rests.
Oft, in her absence, mimic Fancy wakes
        110
To imitate her; but, misjoining shapes,
Wild work produces oft, and most in dreams,
Ill matching words and deeds long past or late.
Some such resemblances, methinks, I find

Some such resemblances, methinks, I find
Of our last evening’s talk in this thy dream,
        115
But with addition strange. Yet be not sad:
Evil into the mind of God or Man
May come and go, so unapproved, and leave
No spot or blame behind; which gives me hope
That what in sleep thou didst abhor to dream
        120
Waking thou never wilt consent to do.
Be not disheartened, then, nor cloud those looks,
That wont to be more cheerful and serene
Than when fair Morning first smiles on the world;
And let us to our fresh imployments rise
        125
Among the groves, the fountains, and the flowers,
That open now their choicest bosomed smells,
Reserved from night, and kept for thee in store.”
  So cheered he his fair spouse; and she was cheered,
But silently a gentle tear let fall
        130
From either eye, and wiped them with her hair:
Two other precious drops that ready stood,
Each in their crystal sluice, he, ere they fell,
Kissed as the gracious signs of sweet remorse
And pious awe, that feared to have offended.
        135
  So all was cleared, and to the field they haste.
But first, from under shady arborous roof
Soon as they forth were come to open sight
Of day-spring, and the Sun—who, scarce uprisen,
With wheels yet hovering o’er the ocean-brim,
        140
Shot parallel to the Earth his dewy ray,
Discovering in wide lantskip all the east
Of Paradise and Eden’s happy plains—
Lowly they bowed, adoring, and began
Their orisons, each morning duly paid
        145
In various style; for neither various style
Nor holy rapture wanted they to praise
Their Maker, in fit strains pronounced, or sung
Unmeditated; such prompt eloquence
Flowed from their lips, in prose or numerous verse,
        150
More tuneable than needed lute or harp
To add more sweetness. And they thus began:—
  “These are thy glorious works, Parent of good,
Almighty! thine this universal frame,
Thus wondrous fair: Thyself how wondrous then!
        155
Unspeakable! who sitt’st above these heavens
To us invisible, or dimly seen
In these thy lowest works; yet these declare
Thy goodness beyond thought, and power divine.
Speak, ye who best can tell, ye Sons of Light,
        160
Angels—for ye behold him, and with songs
And choral symphonies, day without night,
Circle his throne rejoicing—ye in Heaven;
On Earth join, all ye creatures, to extol
Him first, him last, him midst, and without end. 

(Excerpt --from, Paradise Lost, The Fifth Book, by John Milton, 1608-1674,
 http://www.bartleby.com/4/405.html

(As if, by sheer momentum, causes my sentence to follow):

I do not think what man has here God has here forbade the tasting of which the desolate aftertaste perdures can be any longer contained within this telling --O ancient myth-- but rather looks for a more contemporary utterance, one that takes nothing unbidden nor unhidden as contumely yet raises sound of sight -- pure and mere gaze -- the stillness of which no leaf has shuddered, where eye falls gently and aware on nothing else but fact itself, on itself as unfolding fact, and makes no move of thought to place what is seen in sleeve or folder to file away for some tainted or terrible prosecution; no move of thought at all, but comes resting movement to a single tear -- a hospitable face for falling feeling, an afternoon's reception of everything in its place and love there
-- caring -- revealing what cannot be, imagined, thus in this image, spoken, and in this utterance, made present, without exception, unexcluded, one being, undivided liberation of all in all for all.

Friday morning wake-up

Soul-Searching as Japan Ends a Man’s Decades on Death Row

By HIROKO TABUCHI

Iwao Hakamada, 78, who has been on death row in Japan for 45 years, was released from a Tokyo prison on Thursday.

 

Jiji Press/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

TOKYO — Iwao Hakamada was a wiry former boxer in his 30s when he was thrown in jail for the killing of a family of four that shocked 1960s Japan. On Thursday, he limped from his cell on death row, a bewildered-looking 78-year-old who, his family fears, may have lost his mind in prison.

It took the courts nearly half a century to conclude that the evidence against him may have been fabricated by police investigators, and to order the retrial he sought.

The decision on Thursday to release Mr. Hakamada, thought to be the world’s longest serving death row inmate, underscored the dark side of a criminal justice system that boasts a near-100 percent conviction rate and immediately led to calls for reform.

Critics have long charged that Japanese prosecutors maintain that rate in part by relying heavily on confessions — instead of building cases based on solid evidence — sometimes wresting the admissions of guilt from innocent people too frightened or agitated to resist police pressure.

(--from New York Times, 28march2014)

How?

Here's how to study scripture: write something.

Now, study.

the finial four

I’ve been thinking lately about Bush, Cheney, Rice, & Rumsfeld. One alluded to the current US President as not having the leadership skills of a trained monkey. One will be paid upwards to 150 thousand dollars for speech at university or corporation. One criticizes the US President for his decisions on Foreign Policy. And the fourth one, the one who once was the US President who took us to unnecessary war, has nothing to say.

With “The Fate of the Earth” Mr. Schell was widely credited with helping rally ordinary citizens around the world to the cause of nuclear disarmament. The book, based on his extensive interviews with members of the scientific community, outlines the likely aftermath of a nuclear war and deconstructs the United States’ long-held rationale for nuclear buildup as a deterrent. 

“Usually, people wait for things to occur before trying to describe them,” Mr. Schell wrote in the book’s opening section. “But since we cannot afford under any circumstances to let a holocaust occur, we are forced in this one case to become the historians of the future — to chronicle and commit to memory an event that we have never experienced and must never experience.” 

(--in Obituary, Jonathan Schell, Author Who Explored War, Dies at 70, by Margalit Fox, 27March 2014) http://app.nytimes.com

Reading the New York Times is sometimes like tying a noose around a beam. You find it astounding that you are not hanging from it. The executioners, such as the four mentioned above, seem to have gathered at the dispensing platform of everyone not them. Cheshire smiles, snarly smirks, smug shrugs, and goofy grins emerge onto the screen of our consciousness. No one will ever find the faces behind the facades, nor will what used to be called justice ever be served with these four.

Let them fade with their evanescent mouths into silent obscurity where they will be watched with wordless gaze by the tens of thousands dead in that desert nightmare.

Mr. Schell’s book and the reviews thereof echo in lending fashion a recognizable emotion felt about the above finial four:

Reviewing it in The Nation, the journalist and historian Jonathan Mirsky wrote, “I know no book which has made me angrier and more ashamed.” (Ibid)

Krishna said it

Anyone can be wrong. That’s not news. What might be news is that everyone is wrong each time they are right, and right each time wrong.

Wrong and right are part of the mood of contesting both fact and opinion with opinion or fact.

In effect, what matters is not opinion or fact, wrong or right -- but the willingness to see the other side with this side, and this side with the other side. And carry on.

A graphic example of what Orwell found so “inhuman” in Gandhi’s approach to personal relationships—albeit not one that Orwell himself cites—is a letter of condolence written by Gandhi to a friend whose family had been killed by the notorious Bihar earthquake of 1934. Having begun by noting that a mutual acquaintance has informed him of the deaths of “all your nearest and dearest,” Gandhi then writes: “How can I console you? Where thousands are dead, consolation can hardly mean anything. This is a moment when we must tell ourselves that everyone is a relative. Then no one will feel bereaved. If we can cultivate this attitude of mind, death itself is abolished. For that which lives cannot die. Birth and death are an illusion. Know this to be the truth and, overcoming grief, stick to your duty.”15 These words again echo those of Krishna in the Bhagavadgītā. “Death is assured to all those born,” declares Krishna to Arjuna on the battlefield of Kurukshetra, “and birth assured to all the dead; you should not mourn what is merely inevitable consequence.”16 From this perspective, birth and death are illusory in the sense that they occur only to bodies and not to the “imperishable one” that resides within.17 Ceasing to identify with the bodily self and identifying instead with the imperishable, one realizes the impossibility of death, for the imperishable “can neither kill nor be killed” (BhG 2.19). 

(--from, “A Petrification of One’s Own Humanity”? Nonattachment and Ethics in Yoga Traditions ^* by, Mikel Burley, University of Leeds, in The Journal of Religion   >  Vol. 94, No. 2, April 2014 

It occurs, often, that thought is how we forget. Whereas, gazing is how everything reveals itself and memory is the stone falling through placid water.

Reading novel, About Face, by Donna Leon, a Commissario Guido Brunetti mystery, I fall into the mood of conversation between Brunetti and the Conte at art gallery about faces and forces in our looking about us. Just that. The rumination about what is considered beautiful, loneliness, and aging.

Wind howls through hanging bells. Snow has gone Downeast. Class cancelled, I set students up with Kieslowski, Parmenides, Heraclitus, and their own rumination.

On such a day tea suffices. Nuts. Sesame sticks. Salad. Soup. A soaking with classical music and reading.

It is stillness that emerges.

A surfeit of stillness.

Even as high trees sway and moan.

Nothing really begins nor ends.

Residing within.

Not inhuman.

At all.

Will you carry divinity?

She said yes.

And you?

Is that what Grandma meant when she’d say, “That’s a shame!”?

Shame is not what we think. Not what we say. Not what we do.

‘Shame’ is not so much about something bad. But more about not seeing the wholeness -- the wholeness which would bring light to many, sight to one, bright joy to surrounding environs.

Now, there’s a practice!

Poetic as in apophatic

Gate open.

Move through.

Soon mud rises

What? Do we think the leads of logic thwart complexity and discontinuous paradox from settling into human character so as to "surprise" us when someone does something that off-ends our sense of propriety or predictable outcome?

The "truthful liars and / the false fair friends" -- the radio and TV personalities who pontificate and fornicate formulations of righteous purity standing behind their assassin's rifles pointed at black men and Latino women and white waifs who dare to have needs that could be helped by assistance and compassion -- these purveyors of political pissing matches while being paid millions by fascist mogels whose only flaw (they abjure) is not being hard enough on those who are ruining this great country for the likes of themselves who are the benchmark spokespeople for the way things ought to be in this land of privilege and success. 

From politicians to police, from preachers to polyglot financiers, from arrogant snipers to smug and snide celebrity cynics -- our airways are filled with pollution and priggish pomposity masquerading as solemn and solid gospel truth.

Ah, the playground names of erstwhile children's prattle -- sean and rush, bill and ann, laura and lindsay, roger and rupert, paul and john, marco and ted, mitch and john, eric and pat.

Bah!

Give me old fashioned absurdity and comic vaudeville, silliness for silliness' sake, and I will smile at our fantastic foibles that peal into sympathetic tearsome laughter.

I have no truck with fearsome smuggery.

They're felling trees this Sunday morning on slope of ski area.

Before mud comes. 

Wait

No more.

About this, do you have any questions?

n/o/ne

Is that “no” or “one”?

Which is it?

Yes.

None other. (Of which there is, wirklich.)

Ignosce mihi, pater, quia peccavi

Fred Phelps dies.

There is no sign he continues his opinions beyond his disappearance.

We’re all freed in understanding this way.

Waltzing winter into spring

 (a haiku)

Could have been left foot

stepping out of winter and

right into spring light

Suffering roots love

Joseph. A good name.

You've got to love a good story.

My sister's birthday.

However it is celebrated, wherever.

Broken bandwagon

Robert Reich is so helpful about economic inequality.

I almost feel there's a remote chance a hopeful thought might arise in my doubting assessment anyone cares to stop the crippling direction of things in this bedraggled and frayed capitalistic demoting democracy.

I'm chary.

And a bit sorry.

There's a welcome on the mat

When in high school we'd march in the St Patrick's day parade. The beers we ordered in 3rd avenue bars we were far too young to have been served.

But that was long ago.

Tonight there are no beers, no parade, no noise.

I light a candle for my family. Sip,water from an old juice bottle. Nibble 4berry pie. Take pills for what I'll surely die from. 

And settle in bed.

Content.

brush strokes

an angel falls through nothing without fear

Songs of drinking and drunkenness. Radio lyric desolation of cultural St Patrick’s Day cliche.

Not that it isn’t or wasn’t true.

Still...

what’s that?

Sun climbs, moves east, the iced dooryard remains hard and fast.

Rob McCall speaks about living way out on the two-lane bumpy roads of Maine.

The Muslim scholar wants us to remember that beauty is the invitation to leave thought and dwell watchfully with inner rest and contemplation.

God has left thought and slowly turns in music of mood encountering no expectation.

To be what is passing is to unsee God in a heart without external measurement.

take ball; go home

Once touched by the light, there is only the remaining nap to fall into.

And through.

no other place to go

War is proof of insanity. 

The Last Laugh

'O Jesus Christ! I'm hit,' he said; and died. 

Whether he vainly cursed, or prayed indeed, 

The Bullets chirped—In vain! vain! vain! 

Machine-guns chuckled,—Tut-tut! Tut-tut! 

And the Big Gun guffawed.  

Another sighed,—'O Mother, mother! Dad!'

Then smiled, at nothing, childlike, being dead.

          And the lofty Shrapnel-cloud

          Leisurely gestured,—Fool!

          And the falling splinters tittered. 

'My Love!' one moaned. Love-languid seemed his mood,

Till, slowly lowered, his whole face kissed the mud.

          And the Bayonets' long teeth grinned;

          Rabbles of Shells hooted and groaned;

          And the Gas hissed. 

(--Poem by Wilfred Owen, {1893-1918}, fromThe Collected Poems of Wilfred Owen (New Directions Publishing Corporation, 1965)

The world we see is distressing and dismaying.

The one we do not see is unread communion, unopened communication. 

What  news?

My heart rouses 

thinking to bring you news 

of something 

that concerns you 

and concerns many men. Look at 

what passes for the new. 

You will not find it there but in 

despised poems. 

It is difficult 

to get the news from poems 

yet men die miserably every day 

for lack 

of what is found there. 

Hear me out 

for I too am concerned 

and every man 

who wants to die at peace in his bed 

besides. 

(—from poem, Asphodel, That Greeny Flower, by William Carlos Williams)

Poets are the way we remember being. 

The way words feel us.

And from Louise Erdrich’s short story “The Red Convertible” (in her book of short stories by the same name). Stephan went to Khe Sanh in 1968. It was at least two years before he came home again. 

    “My boots are filling,” he says.    He says this in a normal voice, like he just noticed and he doesn’t know what to think of it. Then he’s gone. A branch comes by. Another branch. By the time I get out of the river, off the snag I pulled myself onto, the sun is down. I walk back to the car, turn on the high beams, and drive it up the bank. I put it in first gear and then I take my foot off the clutch. I get out, close the door, and watch it plow softly into the water. The headlights reach in as they go down, searching, still lighted even after the water swirls over the back end. I wait. The wires short out. It is all finally dark. And then there’s only the water, the sound of it going and running and going and running and running.     (--Erdrich, The Red Convertible, p.10)

Feeling the fact.

Perhaps there’s no other place to go.

So, let’s.

Whatever is at hand

Proper movement, correct relationship.

Pen writes. Cup tilts for sipping.

The human is the open field disclosing what arrives there to what is already there.

The more you know, the more you don’t

Reading about Pelagius and Augustine.

Feels different decades later.

If you want to complete the unsurpassable Buddha Way, you must first vow to save each and every sentient being, whose numbers are infinite. If you want to save all sentient beings, you must arouse a spirit of dauntless courage and push yourself forward mercilessly until you can see your true nature as if you are looking at it in the palm of your hand. (- Hakuin)

They didn’t know any more than we know.

You’ve got to hand it to the unknown.

Infinite possibilities.

Thursday snow; a quietness

                                              When sitting alone

 

                                        I have often thought

        the quiet

           is things, beings,








                                                         just as they are






                                                                                      with nothing added



nothing

taken away.

Chiaroscuro

Rain over Portland.

Domeniche e Ultime, Aspiciens; Adventus Domine. Chant plays.

Out of season.

good

night

prayer

breaking home

Arvo Pärt’s Spiegel im Spiegel through morning front room.

Bald Mountain across road in light snow.

Scent of toast from kitchen.

...Sir John Davies was confident that a poem on the soul written as a discursive appeal to reason could be written alongside an imaginative celebration of the cosmos as a love-led dance, because for Davies the Light of Reason is also the Love who dances at the heart of all things. Cosmology and ‘spirituality’ were in harmony because they were understood to spring from the same source. (p.142, see below) 

In the midst of this ruinous divorce between reason and imagination, poets and scientists were asked, as our own children so often are, to take sides. The scientists were asked to live with their father, ‘reason’, and to hate and deny their mother ‘imagination’. The poets were expected to cling to the skirts of ‘imagination’ and never dare to walk in the objective world described by ‘reason’. (p.143) 

(--from chapter titled “Holy Light and Human Blindness: Visions of the Invisible in the Poetry of Henry Vaughan and Milton,” in, Faith, Hope, and Poetry, Theology and the Poetic Imagination, by Malcolm Guite, c.2010)

Tabula Rasa, by Arvo Part, Alfred Schnittke, piano, Lithuanian Chamber Orchestra, plays as sunlight peaks through, violin and cello strings arching swing falling like remnant snow between here and mountain.

Earlier in his book Guite writes:

In fact, the fallenness of our mental capacities may rest precisely in the disordering or imbalance of relations between our capacities of reason and imagination. The idea that the fall results in a disordering of relations between our own capacities, leading to loss of vision and paralysis of will, is a central part of Christian tradition expressed most clearly by St Augustine, rendered famously in English verse by Milton and more succinctly, though less famously, by Sir John Davies in Nosce Teipsum

Even so by tasting that Fruit forbid

    Where they sought knowledge, they did error find; 

    Ill they desir'd to know, and ill they did ; 

    And to give Passion eyes, made Reason blind. 

For then their minds did first in Passion see 

    Those wretched shapes of Misery and Woe, 

    Of Nakedness, of Shame, of Poverty, 

    Which then their own experience made them know. 

But then grew Reason dark, that she no more 

    Could the faire Forms of Good² and Truth discern ; 

    Bats they became, that Eagles were before: 

    And this they got by their desire to learn.

(pp.11-12, ibid) (see also: http://www.luminarium.org/renlit/humane.htm for entire poem)

 I listen to octogenarian Eido Roshi interviewed by Eliose King (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wL1V1eURgDI, cf. Soul Sessions). Someone refers to him in comments section as  “One of the many great, yet flawed, teachers.” I remember going to his New York Zendo in 1970 to sit of an evening.

What time remains, remains.

What am I...

learning?

(breathing)

If form is emptiness, 

and emptiness form -- 

what is silent stillness

but

feeling

breath?

let learning learn us

The role of teaching is not to teach something to someone. Authentic teaching is lernen lassen, to let learning happen.(Heidegger, Was Heisst Denken).

Students forget almost everything from the courses they take except what they have awoken to -- a bit of themselves emerging from hiding.

We remember the flashes of awareness that surround and burst forth from moments and situations revealing themselves in our gaze and hearing.

The job of the learning person is to be present and open.

Teachers who are themselves learners help us be present. They help us open eyes and ears, heart and mind.

A teacher, out of compassion and love, seeing that somebody is suffering, gives a path. But each individual has to walk on the path. There is no magical miracle with the teacher. Totally out of the question. He only shows the path. That is the only role of the teacher, nothing else. (-- S. N. Goenka, “Superscience")

No agenda but that. No curriculum but this. No grade but the ascent to insight.

I slept, methinks, and woke,     115  

And, slowly gazing, find me stripped in sleep. 

In the rash lustihead of my young powers,

  I shook the pillaring hours
And pulled my life upon me; grimed with smears,
I stand amid the dust o’ the mounded years—          120
My mangled youth lies dead beneath the heap.
My days have crackled and gone up in smoke,
Have puffed and burst as sun-starts on a stream.
  Yea, faileth now even dream
The dreamer, and the lute the lutanist;                          125
Even the linked fantasies, in whose blossomy twist
I swung the earth a trinket at my wrist,
Are yielding; cords of all too weak account
For earth with heavy griefs so overplussed.
  Ah! is Thy love indeed                                                    130
A weed, albeit an amaranthine weed,
Suffering no flowers except its own to mount?
  Ah! must—
  Designer infinite!—
Ah! must Thou char the wood ere Thou canst limn with it?  

(--from poem, The Hound of Heaven, by Francis Thompson, 1859-1907) http://www.bartleby.com/236/239.html 

My father would recite pieces of this poem. He knew char. It was his guru. Things like failure, fear, addiction, family alienation can each be guru.

One writer puts it this way:

To be clear, I’m not discounting things we can learn from others. That’s part of the beauty of life—we can learn from so many sources. For me, sources like Eckhart Tolle, David Hawkins, and Anthony DeMello led me to the epiphany I want to share with you now.
My problem wasn’t the fact that I looked to others for ideas; it was that I became attached and dependent. I gave away my power. I had lost sight of the fact I already had my own gurus. And you do too. Let’s get re-acquainted with the world’s top 7 gurus now. Here’s the kicker: we’ve never known them as gurus. But, this new perspective changed my life and I believe it can do the same for you.
Let’s meet them and understand them for the life-changing gurus they really are.
http://tinybuddha.com/blog/the-worlds-top-7-life-changing-gurus/

We’re reluctant learners.

We think we know how to learn.

We don’t.

What we need to do is let learning learn us.

No kidding --

Lernen lassen = Let learning happen! 

really / the biggest

At Sunday Evening Practice we read from Tony Parsons book, As It Is, The Open Secret of Spiritual Awakening.

His words wove through candlelight. They sat us down where we were.

Then cummings:

let it go 

let it go – the
smashed word broken
open vow or
the oath cracked length
wise – let it go it
was sworn to
go 

let them go – the
truthful liars and
the false fair friends
and the boths and
neithers – you must let them go they
were born
to go 

let all go – the
big small middling
tall bigger really
the biggest and all
things – let all go
dear 

so comes love

   (--poem by, e.e. cummings, in Complete Poems, 1904-1962) 

There’s no guru but life.

No subject, no object.

Gazing through.

What is. 

écoutez bien

The Christian metaphor begins Lent.

Mystics long to listen to God.

Sun shines. 

Faith, says a rabbi, is the willingness to live with uncertainty.

Time changes.

Two Haiku

(--for Okie)

Oh! He’s gone!
But not in the eyes --
   yours, his
                         
                          (wfh)


(--for Bob)

His smile reaches us
through photo there --
sun glints off snow
facing us . . . here
                       
                          (sh)

“abortive offspring of the unthought rational”

We spoke of Nietzsche Friday night.

But, here’s Heidegger:

Occasionally we still have the feeling that violence has long been done to the thingly element of things and that thought has played a part in this violence, for which reason people disavow thought instead of taking pains to make it more thoughtful. But in defining the essence of the thing, what is the use of a feeling, however certain, if thought alone has the right to speak here? Perhaps, however, what we call feeling or mood, here and in similar instances, is more reasonable—that is, more intelligently perceptive—because more open to Being than all that reason which, having meanwhile become ratio, was misinterpreted as being rational. The hankering after the irrational, as abortive offspring of the unthought rational, therewith performed a curious service. To be sure, the current thing-concept always fits each thing. Nevertheless, it does not lay hold of things as it is in its own being, but makes an assault upon it.” (pp. 150-151, Martin Heidegger, in What is Called Thinking) 

At memorial service thursday for Jim’s brother Tony, the pastor commented that so many people today are bible-illiterate. It was a soft jab.

Sitting is back pew I thought: Nope, I’m bible-illiteral.

That felt like a successful bob-and-weave.

here of a friday morning

Emptiness intersecting nothing there.

brush drawing by Thomas Merton
(image size: 8 1/2 h x 5” w, on gray card)

Dom Aelred Graham wrote about Zen Catholicism.

Thomas Merton felt the Celtic cross a reflection of it.

Nothing there is here diaphaneity.

another taxi will come along

He suffers from hope. He thinks someone will help him in the craziness of prison life. He doesn’t feel he belongs there. An insane place. Cruel uncaring people. “Help or go back to your spiritual dope.”

He’s right. Which brings little joy. Being right. When everything is wrong. Try again. No hope from dope.

Via Negitiva: A way of describing something by saying what it is not, especially denying that any finite concept of attribute can be identified with or used of God or ultimate reality.

No help.

No hope.

No dope. 

Wednesday, ashfall

Dust

Remembers

Ground

Fat Tuesday (haiku)

Yellow sponge

high and dry

outside empty tub

Elgar Cello Concerto, 1st mvmt

Walter White told his wife in Breaking Bad he did it for himself. He was good at it. He liked it. He felt alive.

We should all be so lucky.

Still, his story is not without its massive complications.

Then, there’s real life.

WARREN — The death of inmate Micah Boland Friday evening at the Maine State Prison in Warren has been classified as a homicide, according to the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner. http://knox.villagesoup.com/p/inmate-death-ruled-a-homicide/1135798

When I walked through crosswalks between prison industries and cellblocks hours earlier that morning had he seen me, had I seen him?

What was he good at? What did he like? Did he feel alive those final few hours?

Like the dawn leaving my first hospice midnight to 7am sitting vigil with the dying musician many years before, when to buy a cup of coffee and donut in streaming sunlight felt like the most liberating gift ever -- I returned to the same place by the pond, filled paper cup with coffee, took two donuts in brown bag, and sat in car across from Habitat for Humanity just looking out at what is good, what is liked, and what feels alive.

Complications.

It’s all about complications -- isn’t it?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RM9DPfp7-Ck

What really is

enlightenment?

Seeing and hearing
what really is --

nothing
no more

Here's your hat, there's the door; what's your hurry?

Russia visits Crimea.

U.S. left some baggage behind in Iraq after it's long visit.

God left by back broken door his visit with humanity.

Let's see -- where's my walking stick?

No violation

We really do want to trust those with badges and guns.

And worthiness would make that trust easier.

HaShem - יהוה

The name

No name.

What is there.

HaShem is the Hebrew word which many pious Jews use instead of the yod-hey-vav-hey (יהוה– YHVH^[1]) name, in casual conversations, and literally means The Name. When they encounter this name during prayers or when reading from the Torah, they visualize יהוה and say Adonai. HaShem is used 7484 times in the Tanach^[2]. Neither HaShem, nor it’s Greek equivalent^[3] is ever used in the Nazarean Codicil.^[4] The first use, of HaShem, is in: Bereshit (Genesis) 2:4 This is the account of the heavens and the earth when they were created. When HaShem God made the earth and the heavens -- The yod-hay-vav-hay name means “self existent” or “eternal”, according to Strong’s (3068). When HaShem revealed His name to Moses, He added “this is my name forever (leolam)”. The word leolam is written in the Torah without a “vav -ו”, and can be read lealeim which means to hide. The Gemara learns from this that the name of HaShem is not to be read the way it is written.

http://www.betemunah.org/hashem.html

comes cosmos

The past, Shakespeare wrote in The Tempest, is prologue.

Word comes before word.

Through silence.

Haiku

Zero, cold outside --

steps on stairs running cats’ feet

circle... of friendship

walking stick leans against rear seat

Let these be my final words: I am happy to be here!

Reading student papers in parking lot of Bangor hospital offices.

Really, I’m happy to be anywhere.

Right now I am here.

And yet, if you think about it, only here is what is.

What is here is what I am.

Happy.

About.

why the world is ethically bereft

"A true friend can act like a mirror and show them what their action looks like from the outside.” (CM, ethics student, writing about Enkidu and Gilgamesh)

...

I like this imaging relationship of friend to friend.

In addition, it suggests something about ethics and friendship -- namely -- authentic relationship might be the criteria of authentic ethics.

Does this suggest that without friendship there is no groundwork for ethics?

It suggests to me that to be ethical is to welcome both the stranger and the intimate into a circle of friendship in order to live together a meaningful creative life in the world.

Shema

Good words.

“The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth.”  (--Niels Bohr)

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks points out that, “Greek thought is logical, whereas Jewish thought is chronological and dialogical.” (In his Feb.2014 talk at NYU,  “Dignifying Difference: The Next Generation of Multifaith Leadership”) http://www.rabbisacks.org/dignifying-difference-next-generation-multifaith-leadership/

This Sunday afternoon, between practice and practice, listening.

Putting aside the rules of logic.

For hearing.

Death drones

I've been thinking about drones killing and maiming ordinary people in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Yemen.

I've thought about the Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces of the United States receiving a Nobel Peace Prize.

I don’t know what to think about (the what seems to be) absurd paradoxes in the contemporary world.

Yesterday, on his way to work on route 17 enroute to Augusta, a 20 year old young man crossed into the opposite lane losing control of his car in falling snow, crashed into a truck, and died. (A sad event.)

It wasn't a drone.

How lucky we still are.

This ironic and unrooted time!

What is not being noticed

Heidegger asked, “Was Heisst Denken?” (What is Called Thinking?)

Is “what is” called “thinking”?

He also said that “The most thought-provoking thing in our thought-provoking time is that we are still not thinking.” (Martin Heidegger, in What is Called Thinking?)

If “thinking” is “what is” -- then the most thought-provoking thing is that we are still not “what is.”

What can this mean?

How has this separation not been noticed?

Can "not being" be noticed?

It is a thought-provoking question.

Practice

Buddha's shadow is entering the fireplace.

Francis' head is lifting itself from the snow.

One dog outside door, one inside door.

We leave our seats.

What is as it is?

Yes, just that.