No; response

Excerpts sans merci:

Kalief Browder, Held at Rikers Island for 3 Years Without Trial, Commits Suicide              By MICHAEL SCHWIRTZ and MICHAEL WINERIP, JUNE 8, 2015 

Kalief Browder was sent to Rikers Island when he was 16 years old, accused of stealing a backpack. Though he never stood trial or was found guilty of any crime, he spent three years at the New York City jail complex, nearly two of them in solitary confinement.In October 2014, after he was written about in The New Yorker, his case became a symbol of what many saw as a broken criminal justice system. Mayor Bill de Blasio cited the article this spring when he announced an effort to clear the backlogs in state courts and reduce the inmate population at Rikers. 

For a while, it appeared Mr. Browder was putting his life back together: He earned a high school equivalency diploma and started community college. But he continued to struggle with life after Rikers. 

On Saturday, he committed suicide at his parents’ home in the Bronx. 

(-- The New York Times) http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/09/nyregion/kalief-browder-held-at-rikers-island-for-3-years-without-trial-commits-suicide.html?_r=0

And:

As his father explained, he’d apparently decided that these torn strips of sheet were not strong enough. That afternoon, at about 12:15 P.M., he went into another bedroom, pulled out the air conditioner, and pushed himself out through the hole in the wall, feet first, with a cord wrapped around his neck. His mother was the only other person home at the time. After she heard a loud thumping noise, she went upstairs to investigate, but couldn’t figure out what had happened. It wasn’t until she went outside to the backyard and looked up that she realized that her youngest child had hanged himself.

(--The New Yorker, Kalief Browder, 1993–2015, BY JENNIFER GONNERMAN), http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/kalief-browder-1993-2015 

Is there someone to say -- ‘Amen’?

No.

lofty emptiness

hidden stillness

nothing moves

only . . .

nowhere to go

A precise mapping for the explorer on the path to enlightenment.

An indulgent reçu.

“You see, my dear, goodness is the greatest force in the world -- and he’s got it.”

(--final line in 1946 film “The Razor’s Edge,” after novel by Somerset Maugham, said to Isabel of Larry Darrell)

With some elaboration:

The Katha Upanishad (commonly assigned to the forth or fifth century B.C.E.) is the first instance when we see a recognizable tradition of Yoga emerge. Within this poetic text there lies the first descriptions of the fundamentals of a yoga practice; the preparation of the body and the cultivation of stability in the mind that steel the aspirant for the discoveries of consciousness. The story unfolds as a conversation between a young, but spiritually endowed Naciketas and Yama the God of Death. Seeking the knowledge of the mysteries of life after death, Naciketas is initiated by the God Yama onto the path of emancipation. He is instructed in the practice of involution, the climbing of consciousness to ever higher levels of being, the transcendental self and the psychospiritual work that prepares the yogi for the event of grace. Reminiscent of the Baghavada Gita’s (500-200 B.C.E.) classic dialogue between Krishna and Arjuna that occurs in a chariot, so the poetic metaphor of the charioteer is used by Yama to instruct Naciketas of man’s relationship to the Higher Self.

Chapter 3, 3-9 

Know the self a rider in a chariot,
and the body, as simply the chariot.
Know the intellect (buddhi) as the charioteer,
and the mind (manas), as simply the reins.
The senses, they say, are the horses,
and the sense objects are their pastures;
He who is linked to the body (atman), senses, and mind,
the wise proclaim as the one who enjoys (bhoktri).
When a man lacks understanding,
and his mind is never controlled;
His senses do not obey him,
as bad horses, a charioteer.
But when a man has understanding,
and his mind is ever controlled;
His senses do obey him,
as good horses, a charioteer.
When a man lacks understanding,
is unmindful (amanaska) and always impure;
He does not reach that final step,
but gets on the round of rebirth.
But when a man has understanding,
is mindful and always pure;
He does reach that final step,
from which he is not reborn again.
When a man’s mind is his reins,
intellect, his charioteer;
He reaches the end of the road,
that highest step of Vsihnu.
And here exactly we find the first instance of the word Yoga used in context with its definition. A precise mapping for the explorer on the path to enlightenment. 

Chapter 6.10-11, 

When the five perceptions are stilled,
Together with the mind.
And not even reason bestirs itself;
they call it the highest state.
When the senses are firmly reined in (dharana),
that is Yoga, so people think.
From distractions a man is then free (apramatta),
for Yoga is the coming-into-being,
as well as the ceasing-to-be.

(--from Times Quotidian,) http://www.timesquotidian.com/2010/01/29/razors-edge/ 

Q: What will zen now look like? A: Like this -- “sense see say.”

Yes.

This.

What will zen, come to America, look like, roughly speaking, in 500 years?

I think it will become here the:

σχολείο γνώση καταλαβαίνω λέγω, (scholeío gnó̱si̱ katalavaíno̱ légo̱) * -- 

or, school of “sense see say.”

Thus, American zen hosts the traveling feast of Dhyana turned Chan turned Zen turns into sense/see/say -- an IAE, intuiting articulating engaging, where science and service blend with a poetry of expressive creativity that embodies the heart and soul of feeling sense, direct seeing, simple saying.

The meditative tradition arising with Upanishads and bouncing forward through haiku to Leonard Cohen and Joni Mitchell lyrics -- accompanied by Robert Lax, Naomi Shihab Nye, e.e.cummings, William  Carlos Williams. Marilyn Hacker, Philip Levine, Adrienne Rich, Stephen Dunn, Alice Walker, Li-Young Lee.

Basho, Santoka Teneda, Issa, Han Shan, Rumi, Machado, Neruda, Yeats, Ginsburg, Logan, Lowell, Pastan.

Zen in North America actively intuits articulating engagement. This is done in either stillness and silence or in movement and speech -- both expressions of inner/outer service and nondual insight.

So, get on and off your cushion, walk briskly and amble thoughtfully, debate vigorously and carefully quietly listen.

Zen is coming to the USA.

It will dismantle the obsession currently known as security, and speak with science and ecology the musings of entire cosmos reflecting on each part articulating the whole with engaging service.

And, as the man in the white ME cap suggested at Friday Evening Conversation, comes quiescence.

Finally, through everything.

Further finally, of David Foster Wallace, in Tributes to David Foster
Wallace, someone wrote:

The first time I finished Infinite Jest, I had to pick up the phone. I needed to talk to someone. I needed human contact, a genuine connection, in the face of the loneliness of the book. I’ve wondered if this was intentional: that we were meant to be so saddened we had to reach out, to forget our petty concerns, and to feel the warmth of other people. 

The commencement address DFW gave at Kenyon convinces me that this compassion and connection, this humanness, was what he wanted. This passage comes to mind:

But if you really learn how to pay attention, then you will know there are other options. It will actually be within your power to experience a crowded, hot, slow, consumer-hell-type situation as not only meaningful but sacred, on fire with the same force that made the stars: love, fellowship, the mystical oneness of all things deep down.

I did not know Mr. Wallace, but I know what his work means to me. Whether he was writing about addiction, John McCain, tennis, or dictionaries, he taught me that irony and apathy mask the truth of how we feel, and that we are capable of much more, that beauty and transcendence are out there, and we just need to know to look for them.

(—Namir Y)

(--from McSweeney's Internet Tendency)
http://www.mcsweeneys.net/pages/tributes-to-david-foster-wallace

[*Note: To those thinking the use of Greek words to describe American experience is odd, remember we are talking 500 years from now. Surely some recurrent cyclic retrieval of expressive language will occur and we will be back to Greek origins embarking on a new homecoming Odyssey from another useless devastation of interminable war.]   

averse and perverse: correlating necessary reciprocity

Reading about police corruption.

The Chicago Police Department fought to keep private this horrendous photo taken between 1999 and 2003 of Officers Jerome Finnigan and Timothy McDermott posing with a black man as if he were a dead deer.  

Maybe it's because the cash-strapped city has already paid over a half a billion dollars in settlements because of police misconduct the past 10 years alone? 

Maybe it's because it was recently revealed that the Chicago Police Department has a secret facility it has been using to harass people off the record? 

Maybe it's because the City of Chicago just passed a reparations bill for the many victims their police have tortured? 

Even more likely, though, is that they really didn’t want the identity of these two officers in the spotlight.                                                                                    http://opcoa.st/HcxM6

Maybe Mencius was wrong in this case. 

Mencius' philosophy of human nature is summed up in the following argument from The Book of Mencius.Since man is originally good, it follows that1. he possesses the innate knowledge of the good and the "innate ability" to do good; (7A:15)2. if one "develops his mind to the utmost" he can "serve Heaven" and "fulfill his destiny;" (7A:1)3. evil is not inborn but due to man's own failures and his inability to avoid evil external influences; (6A:8) 4. serious efforts must be made to recover our original nature; (ibid) and5. the end of learning is none other than to "seek for the lost mind." (6A:11) http://www.pages.drexel.edu/~cp28/confuc.htm

Maybe America is exempt from such thinking.

Xunzi’s most famous dictum is that “the nature of man is evil; his goodness is only acquired training.” What Xunzi preached was thus essentially a philosophy of culture. Human nature at birth, he maintained, consists of instinctual drives which, left to themselves, are selfish, anarchic, and antisocial. Society as a whole, however, exerts a civilizing influence upon the individual, gradually training and molding him until he becomes a disciplined and morally conscious human being. Of prime importance in this process are the li (ceremonies and ritual practices, rules of social behaviour, traditional mores) and music (which Xunzi, like Plato, regarded as having a profound moral significance).Xunzi’s view of human nature was, of course, radically opposed to that of Mencius, who had optimistically proclaimed the innate goodness of man. Both thinkers agreed that all men are potentially capable of becoming sages, but for Mencius this meant that every man has it within his power to develop further the shoots of goodness already present at birth, whereas for Xunzi it meant that every man can learn from society how to overcome his initially antisocial impulses. Thus began what became one of the major controversies in Confucian thought.
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/274068/Xunzi

Perhaps it is a case of caring. Who cares about corruption? Current thinking is that everyone -- everyone -- is a liar and a thief. As such, corruption headlines are merely human nature writ large. Anyone who says “I have nothing to hide," is hiding something.

What to do?

Nothing.

Do nothing.

It is the effort to right wrong that shifts wrong into righteous crusade masquerading as law enforcement that mimics and cynically takes on role and persona of wrongdoing, only now with patina of official untouchability.

It is little wonder that so much of the gun ownership conversation revolves around protecting the individual from both the law-averse and the law-perverse, the criminals breaking the law and the other criminals broken with law as cudgel.

China today debates rule of law versus values middle way.

Confucianism as the old ideology had been criticized for a long time from the official point of view in the past. However, Confucianism didn’t lose its core value actually. Perfect virtue, the Middle Way, and the authority admiration are still its salient features. The authority with the perfect virtue doing in the middle way is the perfect ideal to Chinese people. Zhou Enlai is just that type of man who is regarded as the person with all these characteristics.
There is confusion when the rule of law tries to come into China and be the fundamental pattern to rule the country. Whether the tradition rooted in Chinese be the obstacle to the rule of law, or the rule of law can replace the traditional value successfully with its distinguishing values
(--The Thinking Way of Confucianism and the Rule of Law, by Guoji Qin, Department of Politics and Law, Shenyang Institute of Engineering, in Journal of Politics and Law, 

Abstract: Confucianism as the old ideology had been criticized for a long time from the official point of view in China; however, its core value is still influencing Chinese society. On the way towards road of the rule of law, Confucianism is considered playing the negative role. It is necessary to study the framework of Confucianism systematically so as to understand why the rule of law shows difference in between China and western world, and why Chinese would rather resolve disputes in Confucianism way than the rule of law. I will discuss the thinking way of Confucianism, analyze its core value and the relation between Confucianism and the rule of law, through which get to the conclusion that Confucianism value has the inclination to avoid the law. http://ccsenet.org/journal/index.php/jpl/article/viewFile/763/739

It might be a good idea to reconsider reciprocality and reciprocity as fulcrum points for moderating human behavior and society. Punishment and incarceration are only small particular points on a long and wide spectrum of the ethics of reciprocity. We have to look longer down the line of emergent creativity in order to moderate a harmonious way of being in the world with one another.

(At 4:43am the New York Times inside blue plastic covering is tossed from car onto front gravel gateway dooryard.)

 Day dawns.

3:15am pee patrol with old German Shepherd and middle-aged Border Collie to same dooryard was successful leading to Chinese philosophers as night seeped into twilight.

Time to nap a while.

My sympathies to all who suffer deviance in human justice.

OAM! (Open air monastery)

Medieval days are over. When boys and girls were smothered by monasteries and convents in feudal motif and absolute obedience.

Gone.

For good.

Today, a different understanding of God. 

Unsheltered.

Open.

And -- we can only hope -- not half as neurotic, psychotic, or officiously unbearable.

As it was in the beginning

Is now

And ever

Shall be

World without

End

This is how 

We pray

Nothing

Matters.

It's where it all comes from.

Creatio ex.

Nihilo.

(If you don't mind

It

Being

Said.)

after reading poem by Denise Levertov on variation of a theme by Rilke

On the mountain the aging German Shepherd tires during walk. His hind quarters buckle two or three times. Time nears.

In prison talk is of trust and feeling. Is stoicism for civilians? one asks. Is broken trust thrown in garbage? Is detachment the end of feeling?

We engage in dialectic. We converse. We argue.

It is learning.

We're doing it.

Her honor and task, once knighted, is an awakened "I can."

wool blanket stays on bed

44 degrees and raining.

Maine.

Whether winter or late spring.

There's always weather.

For the talking.

One meets the Other

Found correlative to zero and one post:

Before there was One,” he said, “there was Zero, and inside that circle dwells the mind of God. One is the creation of the world. But when you have a world, you have things. So once you have One, you have Two, and then, sooner or later, infinity, infinite infinities. These are not just concepts; this is what creation is all about. Before the beginning was the Zero; in the beginning was the One. And since Two is already implied, you get curious about what would happen if the One meets the Other. Besides, there are so many things you can play with. Everyone knows that opposites attract. Well, sometimes there’s a kind of magnetic field between two opposite truths. You can use that to create something new. Or you can contemplate the two truths in such a way that they become one greater truth. They appear as if you were seeing the same thing with the right eye and the left eye, in a kind of depth vision.”

(--from, Meetings with the Archangel,  A COMEDY OF THE SPIRIT, by Stephen Mitchell  )http://stephenmitchellbooks.com/fiction/meetings-with-the-archangel/

This is what we spoke about in prison Friday morning.

Our professors educate us for free. They are kind. No pomp. Just circumstance, just standing around, or, in our case, sitting around.

A seminar of circumstance.

We are grateful students.

papers please?

Soaker rain Monday morning new month. How passing of time changes clothes and assumes new names in its flight!

One by one we fall away from where we were. A seamless recycling continuance like water from cloud to mountain through brook to well through faucet into pitcher into glass then sipped coursing body passing out and back into earth.

How I hope to pass away 

While gazing at a round moon 

In a cloudless sky   

Shining over lotus flowers in full bloom. 

              -- Rengetsu (1791-1875)

I have no papers.

expire-ring

Thank you NSA for holding our stuff for US. We'll take it from here. 

We...

Begin again. God is zero.

Everything else is one.

One imagines two and three.

We...

Trimurti; Three Treasures; Trinity; 

Islam, Iman, & I'hsan.

questions follow answers

Like a passing train.

What life feels like?

Itself alone.

What is held as true about God?

(There's no
grade for
This
inquiry.)

Heal all ill. Free all imprisoned. Visit each transitioning.

What is worth
doing
today?

Ground. Planet. Universe. Mind

A world comes into being.

Being is not a world.

Being is itself. 

Alibhai-Brown appeal to a notion of the “world” as constituted by a web of implicitly evaluative descriptions or “ideas” that inform our perceptions as well as our self-image. In the present case, the claim is that they conceal and mystify -- in that sense a “world” is vulnerable to critical scrutiny. A “world” is saturated by evaluative thought, ideas, general descriptions -- hence the primal, deeply uncomfortable, and now somewhat abandoned role of the philosopher as the critic of the ideas that inform the world we inhabit, the uncomfortable role of the philosopher, therefore, as the undermining critic of the unconscious function of our self-images. 

(--p.257, Philosophy as a Way of Life, Ancients and moderns, Essays in Honor of Pierre Hadot, Edited by Michael Chase, Stephen R.L. Clack, and Michael M. McGhee; in chapter 14, “Wittgenstein’s Temple, Or How Cool is Philosophy? by Michael McGhee) 

Someone said that God is zero. Everything else is one.

Unborn. 

Not two.

Then there is prayer.

When one sees nothing. 

Allowing what is true itself to feel its way into one-an-other.

Ground. Planet. Universe. Mind.

in the dream, a backyard

When is accident not substance? Does experience have any replication or extension? Is experience a solitary dwelling in the moment with no retrieval apart from what we call memory?

The impulse was to look up a childhood block-mate from Brooklyn.

There is a fiction of historical connection. We don’t know each other. That was then, an accident of proximity. What is here is what is now.

Death itself gets rid of all that is still sinful; this isn’t magic but good theology. There is nothing then left to purge. Some older teachers suggested that purgatory would still be necessary because one would still need to bear some punishment for one’s sins, but any such suggestion is of course abhorrent to anyone with even a faint understanding of Paul, who teaches that “there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ.”
(--p.170, Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church, by  N. T. Wright)

What does it mean to be “in Christ?” Definition suggests “awaited Messiah.” Anointed. A hallowing experience. Holy. Consecrated to God.

The terms substance and accident arise.

Natural Philosophy - Substance and Accident 

What the meaning of "IS" is 

First, as a kind of preliminary and as tool for philosophical discourse, one should be familiar with the basic distinctions of Aristotle's logic. The basic logical distinction for our purposes is between accident (what exists in and is said of another) and substance (what does not exist in another & not said of another). As an example of what Aristotle means, consider what is named by the word "white." The reality that this word names (a particular color) can be said of some other thing as eg. "This thing is white." "White" is said of "this thing" as though the color belonged to "this thing." Furthermore, it is understood to exist in "this thing;" one does not find any "white" except that is in "this thing" or some other thing. This way of speaking can be contrasted with another, as for example "This thing is Socrates." "Socrates" does not name the same kind of reality that "white" does in the previous example. "Socrates" is not said of "this thing" in the same way as "white" is, and "Socrates" does not exist IN "this thing." Rather, "Socreates" IS "this thing," and the sentence "this thing is Socrates" is understood to assert an identity between the two realities named. 

This basic notion of Aristotle's logic reflects the basic distinction in the way reality is stuctured and reflects the basic way that we view reality. The fundamental distinction is between substance and accident. Substance is whatever is a natural kind of thing and exists in its own right. Examples are rocks, trees, animals, etc. What an animal is, a dog for example, is basically the same whether it is black or brown, here or there, etc. A dog is a substance since it exists in its own right; it does not exist in something else, the way a color does. 

Substance and Accidents 

Accidents are the modifications that substance undergo, but that do not change the kind of thing that each substance is. Accidents only exist when they are the accidents of some substance. Examples are colors, weight, motion. For Aristotle there are 10 categories into which things naturally fall. They are

• Substance, and

• Nine Accidents:

• Quantity, 

• Quality, 

• Relation, 

• Action, 

• Passion, 

• Time, 

• Place, 

• Disposition (the arrangement of parts), and

• Rainment (whether a thing is dressed or armed, etc.)

All these distinctions are basically logical, but in a sense they reflect the structure of reality. One never finds any substance that we experience without some accidents, nor an accident that is not the accident of a substance. Every dog, for instance, has some color, place, size. Nevertheless, it is obvious that what a dog is is not the same as its color, or its size, etc.  

(--Joseph M. Magee, Ph.D. Thomistic Philosophy Page)  http://www.aquinasonline.com/Topics/substacc.html  

The accidents of Bensonhurst have dissolved.

Something, perhaps something holy, transcends.

What is this ‘holy?’

Outside, morning birdsong.

Inside, dark grey cat enters room.

Then leaves.

As I did the old neighborhood.

Which ceases to exist as accident of time.

Now, is, solitary.

the show; untidiness here

Why do we pray even when the notion of prayer seems absurd?

No reason.

(Something much different from reason.)

Fear is what happens when reality collides with our personal fiction. Our practice is based on expectations—expectations about who we are, why we are practicing, and what our practice should be. As our hope disintegrates, it may be replaced by fear. Our characteristics, personality, all of our beautiful plans and ideas are like snowflakes about to fall on the hot stone of our meditation practice. 

Maybe you’ve poked through boredom and have had a first taste of spaciousness. Until your experience has become stable, the fear remains that your dreams, your life, and your base could fall apart. The more you contemplate space, the more you are aware of the dissolution of everything you have assumed to be real, lasting, and reliable—including your motivation and your practice. Now it all feels transitory and unreliable. This crisis, rooted in dissolution, translates as fear. 

(--from, Facing Fear, by Lama Tsony, Tricycle). http://www.tricycle.com/cushion/facing-fear

Prayer is dissolution of separate self and reintegration of what is one with itself.

In other words, we pray because there is no one praying. There is only prayer.

And prayer is the wistful joy that compassion visits upon absurd people performing and practicing open and absurd prayer.

Prayer is where meaning disappears into the revelation of truth.

And truth is meaningless.

There is only truth, not meaning.

There you are.

And here I am.

And here's the show.

Unceasing.

Prayer.

nullification

Sebastian Junger said it was brotherhood veterans missed when coming home. Who to trust? When? To what length?

When we forget life and death are right now, we forget our real connection.

Those in combat know this real connection.

We are not alive when we forget death's proximity.

Hence, contemporary life is forgetful of death and forgetful of life.

No life, no death, then no resurrection.

It was Pentecost

And nothing happened.

The morning was the morning.

The walk in solitude was just that.

The air was warm and early fresh.

If I were to say "Holy Spirit" it would be unnecessary words.

So I won't.

I'll say nothing other than...

It was Pentecost

One Pennsylvania morning in May 

And the next and next

numbers

As I drove north from Maryland and Delaware into Pennsylvania to New Jersey on Saturday afternoon, up ahead, some distance of miles and luck of the draw, John Nash and his wife were ending their lives in an automobile crash at interchange 8a of route 95 only a matter of distance from the car I drove, and I, oblivious but for distance, was not near the accident.

What was called a beautiful mind went off into an uncharted theorem free of body and mind.

We ate Chinese food with Maria.

Maria is 87.

Nash was 86.

The true beauty of your life

Sunday stillness sitting with arisen yet invisible reality dressed in transparency.

Everything seen is unseeable. Everything unseen is yet-to-be presenced.

The elderly couple know these words.

One unseeably nearing the beyond; one presenced in lazy boy meditation on other side of sliding door.

(--from,  Living Wabi Sabi: The True Beauty of Your Life, by Taro Gold)

Wood birdhouse swings gently in light breeze.

Anybody home?

We all are.

Meadowbrook Rd, Lower Gwynedd, PA, Sunday Morning

Sitting where
Tom sat

and
Maria sits

these
lovely two

one

why look anywhere else

The search for God is God.

steady as she goes

We stay present

even

when absence

claims 

so much

1. Re(mind)er: No Friday evening practice; 2. No(tice): an important pedagogical clarification

1: Re(mind)er:
Meetingbrook practice this week will be taking place in Maryland environs.

If you are practicing in Camden Maine (or elsewhere) we will be joining you in heart and mind.

Our regular practice in Camden will resume on Tuesday 26may.

...

2: No(tice):
In addition, after repeated misappellate pronunciations sent my direction, I must clarify what some people (viz, prison inmate, then hospital patient) who have been addressing me as 'doctor' need to know when they say 'doctor.'

Here is my positive correction. If you would like to call me doctor, please understand the correct situation of context. Here is my credential: NiDN.

NiDN stands for: Nulla il Dottore Niente (or: 'Nothing the Doctor of Nothing.')

From years of studying Absolute Nihility, Emptiness, Shunysta, and No Way via Wu-Wei, I have arrived at a particular and peculiar learning degree equivalent to a PhD but without the fuss, fancy, and fantasy so associated.

As grateful decipient of this non/neo academic NiDN feather-in-cap honor in the field of Autodidallocism, I will continue to engage in self-learning through others. Which, in itself, is a legerdemainic enterprise in that -- there is no other. Hence, as the 13th century sage master Dogen Zenji put it:

"To study the Way is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be enlightened by all things. To be enlightened by all things is to remove the barriers between one's self and others."  (source)

http://www.unitedearth.com.au/dogen.html

There now -- that's now settled!

defining

Prayer is

acceptance of

What Is

taking place

with grace

Maryland hospital cafeteria haiku

Sitting with doctors

at lunch

Clean hands

...

Younger man

stands at table

Older man eats greens

...

Nurse in burgundy

reads thick book

Halfway through

...

Applause from kitchen

serving area

Everybody remembers

...

Woman in green

rain jacket

Unscrews thermos cup

Do your best when there's nothing better to do

Is there ever a time when mind and heart do not long to find rest in what is true and kind?

And so, we look and continue to listen. 
Despite our impatience. 

Which will pass.

As all things do.

"In the West, there are many who approach Buddhism primarily intellectually. In the East, many approach it primarily as a tradition—part of their cultural heritage. Yes, Buddhism contains immensely profound and complex intellectual information. Yes, it is an important cultural tradition in many Eastern civilizations. However, Buddhism’s true gift is that it teaches us to learn and experience the true characteristics and the nature of our mind and the world, as they are. Through meditations like those on lovingkindness, compassion, devotion, and wisdom, Buddhism trains us to improve our mind in how we think, communicate, and act with others and the external world. If our mind becomes wholesome, then our vocal and physical activities will become sources of peace and benefit for ourselves and others. This life will be happier, as will the next. Ultimately, through proper meditation, we will be liberated from the suffering of samsara."

(--from, Don't Get Stuck in Neutral Meditation is more than a respite—it's a chance to overcome our afflictions. By Tulku Thondup)

Returning back to hotel last night, phone call comes that I've got another task -- to bring food to woman in distress and pain (and hunger) in hospital I'd just left after visiting hours ended for the night.

She requests takeout from lounge downstairs. I do so. Handoff to Saskia outside emergency room. Drive the round trip. Back in room, salad and water. Chocolate cookie.

Sleep.

Rrring! Trying to unring?

When you think you're done, you're not.

Any questions?

Note: concerning this week's practice

Meetingbrook practice this week will be taking place in Maryland environs.

If you are practicing in Camden Maine (or elsewhere) we will be joining you in heart and mind.

Our regular practice in Camden will resume on Tuesday 26may.

Of a long day's ride

Rain ferocity as we approached outskirts of Washington, D.C. 

No idea how tires stayed on road.

You?

la nuit dernier

This is the last thing

I want

To say

Everything

Everything 

Leads to

This

This 

Is

God's name

You

    don't

Say

"Literature is the original Internet" (MP)

Please: (defined as "cause to feel happy and satisfied.")

Prayer? Or intellectual life as spiritual survival?

MARIA POPOVA: You know, we never see the world exactly as it is. We see it as we hope it will be or we fear it might be. And we spend our lives going through a sort of modified stages of grief about that realization. And we deny it, and then we argue with it, and we despair over it. But eventually — and this is my belief — that we come to see it, not as despairing, but as vitalizing. 

We never see the world exactly as it is because we are how the world is.            

(Maria Popova, from radio show, On Being)
http://onbeing.org/program/maria-popova-cartographer-of-meaning-in-a-digital-age/7580

How delightful her work and our reading of it.

Stewarding culture and seeing soul.

not-yet awareness

Of course.

The birds they sang
at the break of day
Start again
I heard them say
Don't dwell on what
has passed away
or what is yet to be. 

(--opening lyrics of "Anthem" by Leonard Cohen)

 Nothing like it.

Twilight.

Monastic chanting fellow creatures.

...

Life is profound if you’re awake to see it. It’s one thing to draw from culture, it’s another thing to be drawn so deeply into the culture that your true nature disappears. Wisdom is not merely something to be gained with old age. One can be wise in every stage of one’s life. To manifest wisdom means simply to step back and see—to reflect, inquire, be aware, be disciplined, and be focused not once in a while, but all of the time, moment to moment. This life is precious and fleeting. Pay attention.

(--from, The Examined Life, An English professor and Zen monk addresses his students at the end of the semester. BySeido Ray Ronci)   http://www.tricycle.com/blog/examined-life

(Arrives day after posting grades.)

What are poets for

We do not all live in the same world. We live in different world spaces. That's what the guy at library giving talk on postmodern philosophy said last night,

He might be right. 

Living in different worlds asks for passports of a kind unthought of yet.

We wonder -- is there life in different worlds?

If we get to different world, would we be able to find way home?

We come in peace. Bring us to your leader.

Stop carefully.

This is holy ground.

Karma is the reverberation of nonduality

What's that sound?

It's nothing.

Pay no mind.

Who shall I say you are? Tell them I am gone. An ascension haiku

Incidence invites co-incidence. Four of us in Panikkar Conversation Wohnkuche for tea yesterday afternoon. Jory will fly to France today. Sarah in DownEast Maine for light of morning lauds. And at meetingbrook a quiet reflection on who anyone is ... becoming, on this feast of ascending Christic emptiness, a silent gaze, an appearing disappearance within name unpronounced.

Antra spoke about how relationship is the ground of love and becoming, and I whooped in agreement! Yes, relationship is the Holy Between where humanity, creation and divinity meet. I shared the image of a painting that I have behind my studio computer in Northampton, one that I bought from a Tlingit artist on Vancouver Island years ago. It features a man/eagle, whose face is man on the right and eagle on the left. Behind him is a dark British Columbian forest, standing silently beneath a full moon. The four of us shared this vision, that if humans are to survive the current devastation of nature, we must morph into one another and morph into the living presence of other creatures. We are all just who we are, in particular, and as we become more and more who we are, we are becoming each other :-) 

(--Robert A. Jonas, from, Radiant Light, A CaringBridge Journal,  in "The Empty Bell", 2014, http://www.emptybell.org/articles/CaringBridge-Journal-14.pdf

Is this the resonance of ascension? That we are lifted out of separation (viz, death) and sounded into resplendent yet unfathomable life? Where all specificity remains specific, and attachment detaches and drifts off into resting seeing what is there as what is there?

We begin again.

Form finding oneself morphing into formless Itself.

Chickadee on cut roof wire, temporarily, hanging outside window.

From 1st Vespers, Feast of the Ascension

Gone. Gone. Gone beyond.

Ant. 3 

No one has ascended into heaven except the one who descended from heaven, the Son of Man, who is in heaven, alleluia.

Perfect!

Today’s violence, yesterday

The headline:

MOVE Bombing at 30: "Barbaric" 1985 Philadelphia Police Attack Killed 11 & Burned a Neighborhood

http://m.democracynow.org/stories/15211

The awfulness.

13th of month, 3 children, Portugal

What happened there?

Our Lady of Fátima
This feast commemorates the visions of Our Lady seen near Fátima in Portugal in 1917 by three shepherd children, Lúcia dos Santos and her cousins Jacinta and Francisco Marto. The visions occurred on the 13th day of each month from May to October, and by October huge crowds were gathering at the site of the visions and reporting visions and miraculous occurrences themselves.
    Pope John Paul II was devoted to Our Lady of Fátima and attributed his survival of an assassin’s bullet on 13 May 1981 to her intervention. Jacinta and Francisco Marto, who died in the great Spanish Flu pandemic of 1919-20, were beatified on 13 May 2000.
(--from Universalis)

How do we look at what we look at now?  

What new sense

Yes. Something from Thomas Merton's poetry:

The Quickening of St. John the Baptist - Written in 1949

On the Contemplative Vocation

Why do you fly from the drowned shores of Galilee, 

From the sands and the lavender water? 

Why do you leave the ordinary world, Virgin of Nazareth, 

The yellow fishing boats, the farms, 

The winesmelling yards and low cellars 

Or the oilpress, and the women by the well? 

Why do you fly those markets, 

Those suburban gardens, 

The trumpets of the jealous lilies, 

Leaving them all, lovely among the lemon trees?

You have trusted no town 

With the news behind your eyes. 

You have drowned Gabriel's word in thoughts like seas 

And turned toward the stone mountain 

To the treeless places. 

Virgin of God, why are your clothes like sails?

The day Our Lady, full of Christ, 

Entered the dooryard of her relative 

Did not her steps, light steps, lay on the paving leaves 

like gold?

Did not her eyes as grey as doves 

Alight like the peace of a new world upon that house, upon 

miraculous Elizabeth?

Her salutation 

Sings in the stone valley like a Charterhouse bell: 

And the unborn saint John 

Wakes in his mother's body, 

Bounds with the echoes of discovery.

Sing in your cell, small anchorite! 

How did you see her in the eyeless dark? 

What secret syllable 

Woke your young faith to the mad truth 

That an unborn baby could be washed in the Spirit of God?

Oh burning joy!

What seas of life were planted by that voice! 

With what new sense 

Did your wise heart receive her Sacrament, 

And know her cloistered Christ?

You need no eloquence, wild bairn, 

Exulting in your hermitage. 

Your ecstasy is your apostolate, 

For whom to kick is contemplata tradere. 

Your joy is the vocation of Mother Church's hidden children - 

Those who by vow lie buried in the cloister or the hermitage; 

The speechless Trappist, or the grey, granite Carthusian, 

The quiet Carmelite, the barefoot Clare, Planted in the night of 

contemplation, Sealed in the dark and waiting to be born.

Night is our diocese and silence is our ministry 

Poverty our charity and helplessness our tongue-tied 

sermon. 

Beyond the scope of sight or sound we dwell upon the air 

Seeking the world's gain in an unthinkable experience. 

We are exiles in the far end of solitude, living as listeners 

With hearts attending to the skies we cannot understand: 

Waiting upon the first far drums of Christ the Conqueror, 

Planted like sentinels upon the world's frontier.

But in the days, rare days, when our Theotokos 

Flying the prosperous world 

Appears upon our mountain with her clothes like sails, 

Then, like the wise, wild baby, 

The unborn John who could not see a thing 

We wake and know the Virgin Presence 

Receive her Christ into our night 

With stabs of an intelligence as white as lightning.

Cooled in the flame of God's dark fire 

Washed in His gladness like a vesture of new flame 

We burn like eagles in His invincible awareness 

And bound and bounce with happiness, 

Leap in the womb, our cloud, our faith, our element, 

Our contemplation, our anticipated heaven 

Till Mother Church sings like an Evangelist.

(--Poem by Thomas Merton)

I recall Daniel Berrigan saying Merton needed a good editor. We all do. But it's the raw stuff, unpolished, that points out what is close to sense before mind.

Shunryu Suzuki on Zazen

See what you might come across!

“What is true zazen? What do you mean by Zen becomes Zen and you become you? You become you is a very important point. You become you. When you become you, even though you are in bed, you may not be you most of the time. Even though you are sitting here, I wonder whether you are you in its true sense. So to be you is zazen.” 

“So it is not a matter of whether it is possible to attain Buddhahood, or if it is possible to make a tile a jewel. But just to work, just to live in this world with this understanding is the most important point, and that is our practice. That is true zazen.” 

“So I say, ‘Oh, I am sorry but soon you will see the bright sunrise every morning and beautiful sunset in the evening, every evening, but right now perhaps you…under your situation it may be impossible to see the beautiful sunset or bright sunrise, or beautiful flower in your garden, and it is impossible to take care of your garden, but soon you will see the beauty of the flowers and you will cut some flowers for your room.’ When you start to do this kind of thing you are alright. Don’t worry a bit. It means when you become you, yourself, and when you see things as they are, and when you become at one with your surrounding, in its true sense, there is true self.” 

(--found on The Daily Zen site, http://www.thedailyzen.org)

Even as first Mourning Dove (Zenaida macroura) greets day.

Twenty billion habitable worlds in the universe, suggests astronomer Chris Impey (author of "Beyond")

atop Mt Battie

two days gone

as is fog

by now

wary trust

All the slings forces of long pressing snow

Could not dissuade these tulips from spring's annual show

Like warriors hidden as oppressive weight fell

Emerging from tunnel their hibernating tale tell

Quotidian

Seven bells.

The day with morning practice and evening practice bookending turkey dinner meetingbrook-style with harmonica and flute following, was summer hot ending with Longmire episodes at end.

I sat in pickup topping Mt Battie reading final essays from course as fog slid over surface water on Penobscot Bay between Camden and Lincolnville.

We read from Mother Prajnaparamita at table.

Phoebes build nest over chapel/zendo window above wooden walkway,