Octave; to where we dwell

Father is karma. Son is rebirth. Spirit is emptiness.

The whole of it, transformed in our phenomenological existence, is resurrection.

The work presented his critique of the key Buddhist theories of karma, rebirth, and emptiness. Then, remarkably using Buddhist philosophical language and phraseology, [Ippolito Desideri] argued for the Christian doctrine of the Holy Trinity and dealt with possible objections against this doctrine that might be raised from the Buddhist philosophical standpoint.
(--p.11, in Toward a True Kinship of Faiths, How the World’s Religions Can Come Together, by HH The Dalai Lama, 2010) 

In Christian tradition Father has long been associated with judgment, anger, or compassion. Son has been associated with incarnating, suffering, dying, and rebirthing. And Spirit has been associated with inspiration, awakening, non-separation, and wise being-in-the-world.

Taken as a whole, this narrative is one of resurrection -- a coming back to life after death, or, a coming back to life within life-itself. It is this notion that death is not confined to the cessation of biological life, but involves a transformation of all forms of life -- physical, psychological, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual -- into a new form of life as a new being in a heretofore unrealized realm of existence.

 This transformed realm is not someplace else. It is we who are, if you will, someone else. It is what has been called the realm of heaven, the sphere of engaged relationality wherein we see and connect with all things and every being in a happy, healthy, and holy manner.

This fits closely with Jesus’s words to the dying brigand in Luke: “Today you will be with me in Paradise.” 5 Despite a long tradition of misreading, paradise is here, as in some other Jewish writing, not a final destination but the blissful garden, the parkland of rest and tranquillity, where the dead are refreshed as they await the dawn of the new day. 6 The main point of the sentence lies in the apparent contrast between the brigand’s request and Jesus’s reply: “Remember me,” he says, “when you come in your kingdom,” implying (whether ironically or not does not concern us here) that this will be at some far distant future. Jesus’s answer brings this future hope into the present, implying of course that with his death the kingdom is indeed coming even though it doesn’t look like what anyone had imagined: “Today you will be with me in Paradise.” There will still, of course, be a future completion involving ultimate resurrection; Luke’s overall theological understanding leaves no doubt on that score. Jesus, after all, didn’t rise again “today,” that is, on Good Friday. Luke must have understood him to be referring to a state of being-in-paradise, which would be true, for him and for the man dying beside him, at once, that very day— in other words, prior to the resurrection. With Jesus, the future hope has come forward into the present. For those who die in faith, before that final reawakening, the central promise is of being “with Jesus” at once. “My desire is to depart,” wrote Paul, “and be with Christ, which is far better.” 7

Resurrection itself then appears as what the word always meant, whether (like the ancient pagans) people disbelieved it or whether (like many ancient Jews) they affirmed it. It wasn’t a way of talking about life after death. It was a way of talking about a new bodily life after whatever state of existence one might enter immediately upon death. It was, in other words, life after life after death.

(--Wright, N. T. (2009-04-24). Surprised by Hope (pp. 150-151). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition. )

Some call the process a similar one to the death of the ego, or the stepping out of the small-self, or ceasing to cling to the particular perspectival preferences with which we are habituated.

Seven times down, eight times up.

Whether zen adept or just man/woman -- we fall to ground, long to arise, and struggle to see our way clear and through.

To where we dwell in peace.

Freedom.

Safety.

Happiness.

Our true home.

come apart, and rest awhile

 We might have to consider adding “monai” after “m.o.n.o.” --

Here we need to revisit a point we made earlier. What does Jesus mean when he declares that there are “many dwelling places” in his father’s house? 4 This has regularly been taken, not least when used in the context of bereavement, to mean that the dead (or at least dead Christians) will simply go to heaven permanently rather than being raised again subsequently to new bodily life. But the word for “dwelling places” here, monai, is regularly used in ancient Greek not for a final resting place but for a temporary halt on a journey that will take you somewhere else in the long run.
(--from, Wright, N. T. (2009-04-24). Surprised by Hope (p. 150). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.) 

Monastics of no other - dwelling places!

Would that make us mono-monaical instead of monomaniacal?

I’d prefer to stay right in this ever-here this ever-changing unpredictable and chaotic ephemera we call our earthly dwelling places with no otherness but clear and interconnected new forms of relational self.

It is Easter Saturday.

Heaven is no longer separate from earth -- not has it ever been.

None of us are any longer separate from God -- nor have we ever been.

Resurrect awareness and attention. Embody this new form of life...

Christ has.

Easter Friday

One more waking from sleep.

One more toasted English muffin.

Wind gusts

At window

A morning meditation.

"When it’s time to suffer, you should suffer; when it’s time to cry, you should cry. Cry completely. Cry until there are no more tears and then recognize in your exhaustion that you’re alive. The sun still rises and sets. The seasons come and go. Absolutely nothing remains the same and that includes suffering. When the suffering ends wisdom begins to raise the right questions." (—Seido Ray Ronci, “The Examined Life” -- in Tricycle)

For a brief while we are here.

"You practice the piano not in order to perform but for the sake of practicing the piano. With music, you don’t practice and then one day become a concert pianist. You are that. Practice is as much an expression of that as of practice itself." (—Philip Glass, “First Lesson, Best Lesson” -- in Tricycle)

and then...

In silence, everything is heard.

Say it again ... (haiku interrupted) ... but without words this time

1.

universe next door

is connected; no, more: it

Is inside (this) one

2.

resurrection is

not after this life; it is

Inside (as) this life

Silence, haiku

If Christ is risen

everything becomes itself --

Now -- no other sound

Easter Monday haiku

When life saw itself

It was as if a Christ saw

What is his to do

bitte noch einmal

“We just die into silence. Die to the past. Die to the future. Die to the breath. Completely let go. The silence reveals itself as refuge, as awareness that can be trusted, tenderly loving and resounding with the majesty and the mystery of the sacred.”
(--Adapted from “Living in the Light of Death” by Kathleen Dowling Singh)

Life after life after death (N.T. Wright's phrasing)

With sunrise.

Drying socks.

The rising ordinary.

Putting the plates on second shelf.

Every thing appears as it is.

not words

Poems are not words. 

Poems are where words go to die; 

then to resurrect into 

contemplation.

unworded silence, light wind touches bowing branches

"What is happening? Today there is a great silence over the earth, a great silence, and stillness, a great silence because the King sleeps; the earth was in terror and was still, because God slept in the flesh and raised up those who were sleeping from the ages. God has died in the flesh, and the underworld has trembled." (--from An Ancient Homily for Holy Saturday)

Broken Open Haiku

Once coyotes yelped
through poem of
          Old Fox
          on Good Friday --

Now, barely able to
find words
          he offers stealth blood
          and water silence

(--for fr Robert, ocso, Good Friday 2014)

"For-you" is a new way to see life and bread

As the story is told, it is as if Jesus was asked, "What is this?" at table when he took bread and looked at them.

"This?" he responded. "This is for-you."

"For me?" one asked.

"No."

"For us?"

"No." Jesus answered. It is for-you."

They looked at him.

bread?

Yes.

Thank you!

Morning snow; nothing to see here

Maine midcoast, April 16, snow.

New York Times has investigative story of alleged rape and sexual assault by Heisman Trophy winning national champion quarterback at Florida State University in Dec. 2012.

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/04/16/sports/errors-in-inquiry-on-rape-allegations-against-fsu-jamies-winston.html?hp&_r=0

Neither snow nor the privilege of athletes seem to go away.

Law enforcement and university officials know their place.

Shovels bury, they don't remove anything.

It's why we have blinds. 

Limiting our looking.

Intimately

To suffer is to enter what is real.

Numb is false.

Real is life.

So, we suffer.

and I sort of felt, for lack of a better word, everything

From India, about Amma, a perspective.

Excerpt:

Darshan is the intimate process of seeing and being seen by a deity. Hindus describe darshan not as the detached, passive sight of aesthetic observance but with the active transitive verbs of taking (in Hindi, darshan lena) and giving darshan (darshan dena). In modern usage, the term darshan signifies the moment when humans view the supernatural, whether through an icon of a deity (murti), a sacred site (tīrtha), or a living embodiment of the divine (avatār). Through darshan, the deity and the devotee engage in a mutual seeing in “a moment of dramatic spiritual interaction.”7 This interactive process symbolizes the “desire for fusion— for the subject/object dissolution of the ‘double sensation.’ ”8 As Isabelle Nabokov/Clark-Decès explains, “The act of darshan . . . also becomes a form of absorbing, so that any objectification of a supernatural is always a form of assimilation as well.”9 It is in such moments of Hindu devotional ritual that the individual both recognizes divinity and is recognized as divinity.10 In Hindu practice, it is through darshan that humanity gains the opportunity to experience the divine on earth. Ideally the darshan experience dissolves the individual ego into cosmic unity with divinity. When interpreted through the advaita vedantic theological ideal of nonduality, the moment of darshan between guru and devotee provides the opportunity for the dissolution of the individuated ego, the symbolic union with divinity, and the intense physical expression of metaphysical cosmic oneness that eradicates duality. Ideally, darshan transforms the individual through these temporary suspensions of the sense of self and individuated difference that incite the recognition of the ultimate similitude between the self and divinity. 

Through darshan, devotees not only see the image of the deity but infuse themselves within it in an active process of becoming. Devotees aim to absorb the gaze of the deity and in the process be transformed. As Lawrence Babb suggests, there is a parallel between the impulse be- hind eating blessed food (prasad), wherein “you become what you eat,” and the process of darshan, in which “you somehow become what you see.”11 Thus darshan should not be explained in terms of being merely an aesthetic experience—something that one passively witnesses—but, rather, as an agentive interaction—something in which one actively engages, a transformative and participatory process. A devotee of Mother Meera understands her unique method of silent visual darshan in highly active terms of transformation. She says, “Along with the gaze from Mother Meera’s eyes comes an infusion of light, light designed to heal wounds within the psyche and give a person sufficient power to move from the perspective of the personality to a divine perspective. . . . This is not one woman staring as the other stares back. Instead, one offers the gift of her soft, penetrative gaze, and the other offers the gift of acceptance.”12 In the Radhasoami tradition the compassionate gaze of the guru during darshan is believed to assist devotees in their spiritual de- velopment: “the drishṭi, the ‘seeing’ or ‘glance,’ of the guru aids the devotee in achieving deliverance.”13 Devotees of Sathya Sai Baba experience darshan as “a moment of ultimate self-transformation by which they are ‘captured’ spiritually and experience a ‘complete immersion in Sai Baba’s love.’ ”14 

Amma’s devotees relate similar experiences of the dissolution of indi- vidual boundaries, immersion in divine love, and cosmic awakenings. Shanti relayed a particularly powerful experience of her darshan during one Devī Bhāva night: “As we knelt in front of Amma, she put our heads together, cheek to cheek, and looked straight into our eyes, the right eye on me and the left eye on Caleb. I remember thinking, Oh no! here we go!!! I lost all track of where I was . . . there was no sense of time, the universe was swirling to life in her eye, and then I was in the universe and I sort of felt, for lack of a better word, everything that has ever been and every thing that will ever be in one second. She pulled back and it was over. I totally lost track of where I was for a second. But as soon as she disengaged I was back with no confusion.” Devotees long for the darshan experience because of the potential for this type of transformative experience, the possibility of experiencing a glimpse into the cosmic reality of the divine, and the efficacy of darshan for catalyzing spiritual awakening. 

(--from Chapter 1, A Darshan Embrace, Experiencing Authenticity and Feeling Witnessed, in  Reflections of Amma, Devotees in a Global Embrace, Amanda J. Lucia (Author) http://www.ucpress.edu/content/chapters/12560.ch01.pdf)

Broken open; gathering with-us

Two names arrive at table Sunday Evening Practice: Dirk and Kali.

The word hospice accompanies.

Gathering us into prayer.

With them.

Gott mit uns; Dasein mit uns.

Univocally holy; week

No one is doing something to us or for us. 

What is being done is being done with us.

Realization

If it is trust, you know it's not ego.

It might be you

"Many arrivals make us live," wrote Theodore Roethke.

No one thinks we are who we are.

Doing nothing is essential for thinking to occur. Many of the most important thoughts are unintentional—they can be neither solicited nor cajoled but have a rhythm of their own, creeping up, arriving, and leaving when we least expect them. It is important to cultivate the lassitude of mind that clears a place for the arrival of what cannot be anticipated. Idleness allows time for the mind to wander to places never before imagined and to return transformed. 

(—Mark C. Taylor, "Idleness Waiting Grace")

We become who we are by stepping into the unknown new and next moment as it presents itself. So, too, we are itself presented in the world.

There is no place to go. No place we have to get to. 

Arrive, that's it.

Wait for the question to arise. Someone will ask the question; it might be you, yourself, asking.

"Where are you?" 

And when you hear that question, do not attempt to answer it.

Wait a while.

Arrive without answer.

Look around.

keeping up with crazy

It might just be a creation by imagination.

Maybe a hologram projected into dark space manifesting this apparent reality.

I don’t know.

Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.                                   —Sherlock Holmes

We don’t have a story. The narrative is unconvincing. The yearly rituals of death and resurrection are again staged. 

We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark. The real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.   —Plato 

The hands of time seem out of touch.

If you’re not dying you’re not living.

Altering our stupidity into lucrative payday is the new crack the new heroin the new

methamphetamine the new radio and right wing cable tv.

It’s hard to keep up with crazy.

1st century to 21st century.

The crime of deterring

Trust.

It is what prison takes away.

Sentencing life to missing it.

Two Cat Story

(haiku)

Middle night growling --
Don’t let mouse
come between you

returning to earth

I picked the squirrel up by the tail. No blood. Just there in road on back. Balancing bicycle heavy with groceries, I walked to side of road, placed it on spate of earth, vigiled a brief while, then rolled bicycle up rest of hill,  

Even the smallest glimpse of freedom heightens our awareness of the pain we have created by our ego-fixation. Seeing the contrast is what inspires us to go forward on the path. In particular, each time we sit on the cushion and meditate, we relax and let go a little bit more. The notion we’ve held onto—that if we don’t keep up our ego-momentum something bad is going to happen—dissolves bit by bit. (—from Judy Lief, “Letting Go,” in Tricycle Magazine)

We are cor-respondence. We are com-munion. We are con-versation. Hence, equality is what belongs to us.

She asked us to engage in several exercises -”keep going in a straight line until you have to turn” – each an invitation to spontaneous interaction, each with a natural lifespan, 5 minutes, 15 minutes, then the energy turned formulaic or repetitive and died away.  She said that’s how it is with all energy, all relationships, that the energy comes and goes and comes and goes like the tide.  She implied that we’re happier when we recognize this pattern, stop fighting it, and just let it happen.  (--from Peter Cunningham blog; dancer Martha Myers words) http://petercunninghamphotography.com 

We’ve had it wrong. We thought it was objects. Others as objects. It’s not. 

What it is, if we can say anything at all, is coming to the clearing where significance is shared by all who find their way there. 

SZ: Would you say that your father was the most important person in your life?       ED: No. (Laughs) Right now I’m talking to you, so you are. Congratulations! (--Michel Engu Dobbs interview, Sweeping Zen, Feb. 21, 2012) http://sweepingzen.com/michel-engu-dobbs-interview/

Unearthing.

Re-earthing.

Discovering one-self there.

Nothing but

Rain 

All over

And into

April

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.