opening windows and doors

At practice last evening, which dream do we consider more real -- the one while we sleep? or, the one when awake?

Chaos and doubt? Or, order and certainty?

Peter Matthiessen’s death drew our observations. So too did the words of the Inner Chapters by Chuang Tzu.

This morning I open doors and windows of yurt, zendo, and book shed/retreat. I burn incense and light candle in memory of Cynthia in zendo at altar cabinet and Pacific coast shell in memory of her son Danny she gave to us. Gassho!

I light candle and burn incense in book shed for Jonathan’s mother on her birthday. 
L’chaim.

Moon this April 7 

is the same age today 

as she was 

the same age yesterday -- 

each a Good day 

birth! Hello                            (--wfh)

What we call “self” is not clenched double-fist solid entity. Rather, self is open-fingered falling through exchange of sensations, memories, thoughts, and awareness engaging a flowing grace and sweet dignity in communion with circumstance and surroundings.

To know yourself is to let yourself go into the unconcealing present situation with integrity and humility.

Free passion is radiation without a radiator, a fluid, pervasive warmth that flows effortlessly. It is not destructive because it is a balanced state of being and highly intelligent. Self-consciousness inhibits this intelligent, balanced state of being. By opening, by dropping our self-conscious grasping, we see not only the surface of an object, but we see the whole way through. We appreciate not in terms of sensational qualities alone, but we see in terms of whole qualities, which are pure gold.  

(—Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, “Love Story” http://www.tricycle.com/insights/love-story)

Balancing, yes.

Pure soil.

April sunshine.

Monday morning.

odd magic

They are laughing at the fact they are old and growing infirm. Someone else’s name arises. “She’s not the center of the universe,” he says to woman reading Parkinson’s material. Climbing stairs he hopes she is still taking the amusement of their banter. 

He only means the interpretation someone gives for something is merely the interpretative opinion their mind fashions out of the patterns and habits accumulated over long stretch of time. 

He means the guess anyone has about the world they visit is as good as the 10,000 guesses they could have made.

He is speaking about anyone who seems to present themselves with the calling card that they are the center of the universe. (Which, in a different context, they actually are.)

He means he knows he’s full of baloney. He’s unsure the reading woman has the same opinion about herself. And leaves it there.

Mountains on all sides 

Rivers looped around it 

There's no trail to my hut. 

When the dragon elephant approaches 

A path opens all by itself 

In the hour of soaring talk 

Neither has to think of meeting 

The other half way 

Though all of you keep 

Wandering into yes and no.  

(-- Muso Soseki (1275-1351))

The physicist claims she has no particular interest in the cultural conditioning the vast majority of us cling to -- what to wear, what not to wear in the tidy expectations of societal norms. The universe, the multi-verse is so enormous, complicated, and diverse -- and we are so small, odd, and narrow. What, I wonder, does it matter if we wear a jacket to dinner, hat to church, shoes to business meeting, use salad fork with lasagna, believe in Jesus or tree-spirits, vote republican, stifle cuss words in mixed company, or even spend our life listening to spondee and dactyl of afternoon trees dancing with sunny breeze during casual walk?

It, the implication resounds, doesn’t matter. Still, there are realities we have to observe.

A MADMAN DREAMS OF TURING MACHINES  

A Madman Dreams of Turing Machines bridges fiction and nonfiction to tell a strange if true story of coded secrets, psychotic delusions, mathematical truth, and lies. This story of greatness and weakness, of genius and hallucination, is based on the parallel lives of Kurt Gödel, the greatest logician of many centuries, and Alan Turing, the extraordinary code breaker during World War II. Taken together their work proved that truth is elusive, that knowledge has limits, that machines could think. Yet Gödel believed in transmigration of the soul and Turing concluded that we were soulless biological machines. And their suicides were complementary: Gödel, delusional and paranoid, starved himself to death fearing his food was poisoned. Turing ate a poison apple, driven to suicide after being arrested and convicted of homosexual activities. These two men were devoted to truth of the highest abstract nature, yet were unable to grasp the mundane truths of their own lives. Through it all, the narrator wonders, along with these two odd heroes, if any of us can ever really grasp the truth. 

(-- from description of her novel by Janna Levin on her website)  http://www.jannalevin.com/science.html

If we are working with “nothing” -- how is the mind to remain sane?

If we are working with “everything” -- how are we able to accomplish anything?

If we are interested in “thinking/acting” -- is there any better way aside from stillness and silence?

A Way of Working  

Once, Chuang Tzu tells us, there was a master craftsman who made such beautiful things out of wood the the King himself demanded to know the secret of his art.  

“Your Highness,” said the carpenter, “there is no secret; but there is something.  This is how I begin.  When I am about to make a table, I first collect my energies and bring my mind to absolute quietness.  I become oblivious of any reward to be gained or any fame to be acquired.  When I am free from the influences of all such outer considerations, I can listen to the inner voice which tells me clearly what I have to do.  When my skill is thus concentrated, I take up my ax; I make sure that it is perfectly sharp, that it fits my hand and swings with my arm.  Then I enter the forest.  I look for the right tree:  the tree that is waiting to become my table.  And when I find it, I ask: ‘what have I for you, what have you for me?’  Then I cut down the tree and set to work.  I remember how my masters taught me to bring my skill and my thought into relation with the natural qualities of the wood.”  

The King said, “When the table is finished, it has a magical effect upon me.  I cannot treat it as I would any other table.  What is the nature of this magic?”  

“Your Majesty,” said the carpenter, “what you call magic comes only from what I have already told you.” 

(--from Chang Tsu: Inner Chapters – Translated by Gia-Gu Feng, Illustrated by Jane English.)

 Behind stack of books, white dog sleeps with cedar tree and Bald Mountain drenched in April sunlight -- behind him -- glare, the Buddha, crucified Christ, piece of split wood leaning against window.

The universe might be unfathomable -- but in my room and backyard -- it is there for my unfathoming eyes.

Odd magic!

Sound of bells in afternoon wind.

uncoverable

The thing about spies is they use truth like they use people.

Both are malleable and disposable.

It does not seem to be worth the trouble tell the truth or keep in touch.

We are killed for reasons we don’t understand and are told lies for no good reason at all.

a funny sentence happened on the way to word

When young, I wanted to live a life of prayer.

Listening, says James Hillman, is akin to prayer: “Prayer has been described as an active silence in which one listens acutely for the still small voice, as if prayer were not asking and getting through to God, but becoming so composed that [God] might come through to me.” 
(Insearch, p.16) (cf. The Word’s Body: An Incarnational Aesthetic of Interpretation, by Alla Bozarth-Campbell, p.85)

Permanently  

One day the Nouns were clustered in the street.
An Adjective walked by, with her dark beauty.
The Nouns were struck, moved, changed.
The next day a Verb drove up, and created the Sentence. 

Each Sentence says one thing—for example, "Although it was a dark
   rainy day when the Adjective walked by, I shall remember the pure
   and sweet expression on her face until the day I perish from the
   green, effective earth."
Or, "Will you please close the window, Andrew?"
Or, for example, "Thank you, the pink pot of flowers on the window
   sill has changed color recently to a light yellow, due to the heat from
   the boiler factory which exists nearby."

In the springtime the Sentences and the Nouns lay silently on the grass.
A lonely Conjunction here and there would call, "And! But!"
But the Adjective did not emerge. 

As the adjective is lost in the sentence,
So I am lost in your eyes, ears, nose, and throat--
You have enchanted me with a single kiss
Which can never be undone                                                                                                     Until the destruction of language.

(Poem, Permanently,  by Kenneth Koch)

Now much older, I prefer to live a life of prayer.

Funny, eh?

The good don't die young. The word you're looking for is 'murder.'

"Has anybody here seen my old friend Martin?" -- asked the song.

I thought not.

Smoke 'em if ya got 'em.

And thanks for looking.

Is the deed ever really done

Serial killers and mass killers disturb us. Profilers and psychologists get busy explaining things. Soon we tire. We look around wondering: What’s next?

I take some time to review and think about O.J. Simpson, the crime, the case, the characters in courtroom. Then I watch the curious Discovery documentary about a man, Glen Rogers, on death row who his brother claims killed Ms Brown-Simpson and Mr Goldman in 1994.

People who study Buddhism   

Should seek real, true  

Perception and understanding for now.  

If you attain real, true  

Perception and understanding,  

Birth and death don't affect you;  

You are free to go or stay.  

You needn't seek wonders,  

For wonders come of themselves.                                          

                - Linji (d. 867?)

I come across a piece written by someone who knew a fellow I studied with in the early sixties in Callicoon NY. It reminded me of what happened to Dennis in 1997. 

Two Troopers, Judge, Editor Killed In Spree  

Police Slay New Hampshire Suspect 

 August 20, 1997|  By The Boston Globe 

.COLEBROOK, N.H. — A man enraged over property disputes went on a killing spree Tuesday in this town near the Canadian border, killing two law officers, a part-time judge and a newspaper editor before he was slain by police after fleeing into Vermont, according to witnesses. Carl C. Drega, 67, of Columbia, N.H., shot another police officer before confronting 20 officers from four law enforcement agencies in Bloomfield, Vt.  ...  

There, police said, he shot lawyer Vickie Bunnell, 44, a part-time judge whose office was in the building, and the paper’s co-editor, Dennis Joos, 50. 

...  

Joos, who once had studied to be a priest, tackled Drega and, in the ensuing struggle, was shot in the spine, witnesses said. "He dragged Dennis for about 15 feet. I think Dennis had already been shot and was just clutching on to him," reporter Claire Knapper said. “Drega told him to mind his own (expletive) business." 

http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1997-08-20/news/9708200087_1_police-cruiser-police-car-dennis-joos

Also cf. http://www.theppsc.org/Archives/DF_Articles/Files/NewHampshire/Colebrook/Drega_Shooting.htm 

The writer included an image from probably 1964 in his blog: 

Here’s what’s interesting about the yearbook entry and the newspaper article -- the oddity of coincidence. The man who shot and killed Dennis was named Drega. In Dennis’ yearbook some 33 years earlier, under ‘Aspiration’ -- the words: “To work with the dregs of Society.”

Yeats words help put this in context: 

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; 

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, 

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere 

The ceremony of innocence is drowned; 

The best lack all conviction, while the worst 

Are full of passionate intensity.  

Surely some revelation is at hand; 

                            (--from The Second Coming, poem by William Butler Yeats) 

Drega; dregs -- surely something is at hand here!

I liked Dennis. He had a Salinger-like quality to him. 

Words are more mysterious than soft snow in mud time.

Out of the wood two hulking tramps  

(From sleeping God knows where last night,  

But not long since in the lumber camps). 

They thought all chopping was theirs of right.  

Men of the woods and lumberjacks,  

They judged me by their appropriate tool.  

Except as a fellow handled an ax  

They had no way of knowing a fool.  

Nothing on either side was said.  

They knew they had but to their stay  

And all their logic would fill my head:  

As that I had no right to play  

With what was another man’s work for gain.  

My right might be love but theirs was need.  

And where the two exist in twain  

Theirs was the better right--agreed.  

But yield who will to their separation,  

My object in living is to unite  

My avocation and my vocation  

As my two eyes make one in sight.  

Only where love and need are one,  

And the work is play for mortal stakes, 

 Is the deed ever really done  

For Heaven and the future’s sakes. 

           (--from Two Tramps in Mud Time, poem by Robert Frost) 

I think of Dennis. I’m glad to remember.

Something, no doubt, about New Hampshire.

Sentiment and sediment.

Window finally open

Maine morning.

Gathering a crowd.

National peanut butter and jelly day.

If still possible

Who's foolin'?

I'll tip my hat to the new constitution 

Take a bow for the new revolution 

Smile and grin at the change all around me 

Pick up my guitar and play 

Just like yesterday 

Then I'll get on my knees and pray 

We don't get fooled again 

Don't get fooled again 

No, no! 

(Excerpt from Wont Get Fooled Again, lyrics by Peter Townshend, The Who)

Maybe not.

CIA Misled Public About Interrogation Program: Report
Reuters

04/01/2014

April 1 (Reuters) - The Central Intelligence Agency misled the U.S. government and public for years about aspects of its brutal interrogation program, concealing details about harsh treatment of detainees and other issues, according to a report in the Washington Post.
U.S. officials who have seen a Senate Intelligence Committee report on the CIA interrogation program described damning new information about a network of secret detention facilities, also called "black sites", the Washington Post said.
The Intelligence Committee is responsible for oversight of the CIA. It completed the 6,300-page draft report on the interrogation program more than a year ago but it remains classified.
At the "black sites", prisoners were sometimes subjected to harsh interrogation techniques even when analysts were sure they had no more information to give, said the report, which the Post said was based on interviews with current and former U.S. officials.
The files reviewed by committee investigators describe previously undisclosed cases of abuse, including the alleged repeated dunking of a terrorism suspect in tanks of ice water at a detention site in Afghanistan. The method bore similarities to waterboarding but never appeared on any Justice Department-approved list of techniques, the Washington Post said.
Officials also said that millions of records show that the CIA's ability to obtain the most valuable intelligence information, including tips that led to the locating and killing of Osama bin Laden in 2011, had little, if anything, to do with "enhanced interrogation techniques", the newspaper said.
A spokesman for the CIA said the agency had not yet seen a final version of the report and was not able to comment, the Washington Post said.
Some current and former agency officials have privately described the study as marred by factual errors and misguided conclusions, the newspaper added.
In March, Senator Dianne Feinstein, who chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee, accused the CIA of searching computers used by committee staffers compiling the report and she questioned whether the agency had broken the law in doing so.
(Reporting by Carey Gillam; Editing by Gareth Jones)

...................

Torture cares nothing for truth.

Torture shows only disdain of human beings. 

Torture cripples the torturer, his country, the people in whose name it is done.

No need to look further for cause of illness plaguing psyche and spirit of this land. 

Look, rather, for healing antidote.

If still possible.

Mu

Japan: Man Freed From Death Row Faces New Effort to Block a Retrial, By MARTIN FACKLER 

Prosecutors filed an appeal on Monday to block a court from granting a retrial to a former boxer convicted of murder whose release last week after 48 years on death row exposed problems in Japan’s justice system. Prosecutors in the central city of Shizuoka challenged the decision by a district court, which said the police might have fabricated some of the evidence used to convict the former boxer, Iwao Hakamada, now 78, of killing a family of four in 1966. While the appeal will not affect the court’s decision to release Mr. Hakamada, it is seen as a face-saving move by prosecutors to prevent further scrutiny of their reliance on forced confessions and possibly shoddy police work to obtain Mr. Hakamada’s conviction and possible others.(--NYTimes, 1Apr14, online)

see through me

At end of Sunday Evening Practice one of the practitioners leaned against kitchen sink and said that only when someone is completely intimate with suffering is there no longer suffering.

No looking at suffering; rather, looking through suffering. To see what is as what is seeing.

Questions such as: Why was I born? What is my life for? What will happen to me when I die? are based on the premise of a solid, permanent entity living in a body and moving through time from day to day and year to year. With this ‘self’ in mind we then inquire into its past, its future and its purpose. It is in relation to this premise of ‘self’ that many of us need guidance. It is imperative, if we want to understand Buddhism, to investigate this particular premise. 

When we investigate this concept of a solid self, our questions will alter from: Why was I born? etc, to: What is the ‘I’? What is the foundation of this idea of self? Is there an ‘I’ that has been born? Is there a ‘me’ that lives life? Is there a ‘me’ that will die? We begin to question right down to our very roots, as it were, with a mind that is fresh, open, and willing to look. We just want to know! 

The unborn does not come within the realm of time, so ‘forever’ is meaningless in relation to the unborn. 

(--from Karma and Rebirth A Buddhist Perspective by Diana St Ruth)

These days, contemporary culture seems overly interested in the undead.

I’m more interested in the unborn nature that precedes, pervades, and follows our born nature. 

How does it feel?

Mazel Tov! 

It is Sunday. And raining. Early spring.

The word mazel literally means “a drip from above.” Mazel can have different connotations depending on its context, but they are all connected to this basic definition—something trickling down from above. 

The signs of the zodiac are called mazalot. Jewish tradition sees the constellations on high as directing the destiny of individuals and nations down below. Thus mazel is the influence dripping down from the stars. (Over the years, bad or good mazel came to mean luck more than destiny.) When the Talmud says that we are not subject to mazel, it means that we are not limited to our destiny; rather our own actions determine our fate. 

There is another meaning of the word mazel that is more relevant to the phrase Mazel Tov. Mazel is the term used in Jewish mysticism to describe the root of the soul. The mystics say that only a ray of our soul actually inhabits our body. The main part of the soul, our mazel, remains above, shining down on us from a distance. Have you ever experienced a sense of spontaneous intuition, where out of the blue you suddenly feel at peace with yourself and the universe? Or a sudden flash of inspiration that makes you see life in a new light? 

Occasionally we may receive an extra flux of energy from our soul above. It can happen at any time, but is most common at a time of celebration—a birth, birthday, brit, bar/bat mitzvah or wedding. It is especially at these times of joy that we are able to see beyond the mundane and the petty and to sense the deeper truths of life. 

When we tell someone Mazel Tov, we are giving them a blessing: May this drip of inspiration from your soul above not dissipate, but rather have a positive and lasting effect, that from this event onwards you should live your life with higher consciousness. You should be aware of the blessings in your life and be ready to receive more and more.

(--from, What Does “Mazel Tov” mean? by Aron Moss)      http://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/160965/jewish/What-Does-Mazel-Tov-Mean.htm

It feels right.

Something changes

Somewhere, in dawn-quiet, these words:

PRENEZ, ET MANGEZ-EN TOUS:
CECI EST MON CORPS
LIVRÉ POUR VOUS. 

De même, à la fin du repas,
il prit dans ses mains
cette coupe incomparable;
et te rendant grâce à nouveau il la bénit,
et la donna à ses disciples, en disant: 

PRENEZ, ET BUVEZ-EN TOUS,
CAR CECI EST LA COUPE DE MON SANG,
LE SANG DE L´ALLIANCE NOUVELLE ET ÉTERNELLE,
QUI SERA VERSÉ POUR VOUS ET POUR LA MULTITUDE
EN RÉMISSION DES PÉCHÉS.
VOUS FEREZ CELA, EN MÉMOIRE DE MOI

(--from Universalis app, French, 4th Sunday of Lent, Mass) 

What happens next is anyone's guess.

It is a turning point. Mere explanation or description gives way to something else.

Two possibilities emerge:

1. Presence, or

2. Absence

And both are the odd, uncanny, beyond our ken -- Unheimlich!

In writing to woman we visit in Augusta yesterday:

Presence is presence even in absence. So it is with God. So it is with everything. "Where ARE you?" We ask. And there is silence. 

That silence, like graph-plane, is ready, always and ad infinitum, for the next arrival and posit of x or y with their concomitant reflection. 

You arrive there, where you are, and point by point falls grounding referents to accompany you in the way line reaches toward its expression.

We arrive home with little understanding of where we've been, or where we are, or where we will be.

But, home.

What shall we five speak about here?

Nishitani on Heidegger at Friday Evening Conversation.

Heim und Haus.

What is it we are missing?

Getting ahead of ourselves, circling back through facticity, being-toward-death.

Wherein, completion is death; wholeness entails disappearance into unarticulated unparticular presence.

Or so it was said.

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.