Is intelligence and love that which completely surrounds us? And if we are present and attentive -- are we that?

LOVE

   (by Charles Olson)

(down to my soul:

assume your nature as yourself

for the love of God

not even good enough

Stories 

only

the possibility

of discrete

men 

There is no intelligence 

the equal of

the situation

There are only

two ways:

create the situation

(and this is love)

or avoid it.

This also can be

Love.

(—pp.299,300, The Collected Poems of Charles Olson: Excluding the Maximus Poems, c.1987, by Charles Olson, 1910-1970)

Odd weather

snow, they say

   at daybreak -- half

       foot  -- 45 degrees now

takknemlighet

Drive through snow

Freezing rain, sleet, dark roads

Headlights blinding --

Yet here in bed

Safe -- no explanation

是 Shì

waking alone, no one

asks, "where is God?"

who is alone waking

solo dios

I have long considered God in silence. Which, I suspect, God mostly is.

The Tractatus consists of seven numbered propositions, with more or less extensive commentary – or rather, of six propositions with commentary and one without. The best-known of the seven propositions are the first and the last:

1. Die Welt ist alles, was der Fall ist. (“The world is everything, that happens to be the case.”)

7. Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen. (“Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.”)

(--from, Tractatus 7.1: Translation and Silence, by Peter Caws, in Philosophy Now) https://philosophynow.org/issues/58/Tractatus_71_Translation_and_Silence 

 I have long considered my odd life as that of a monk’s, a monastic exclaustration of sorts, with only an invisible habit of interiority. 

Contemplative prayer is, in a way, simply the preference for the desert, for emptiness, for poverty. One has begun to know the meaning of contemplation when he intuitively and spontaneously seeks the dark and unknown path of aridity in preference to every other way. 

(from The Climate of Monastic Prayer, by Thomas Merton) 

We are infants in the realm of God -- “infant,” from the Latin “infans” meaning “not able to speak.”

To the visitor or newcomer a day in the monastery may appear to have a seamless, uncluttered beauty and perfect orderliness. The monastery is beautiful and our day has a rhythm and formality. As monks we know that as we seek to be faithful in work, in prayer and in fraternal relationship, we very often arrive at a place of vulnerability born of a somewhat bitter self-knowledge. We learn that the monastic life is not about our achievement but about our readiness to make our weakness available to the mercy of God. Perhaps this is our most important work- to realize that we are in desperate need of this mercy. At best we become accustomed to letting things fall apart, noticing the fragmentation that is inevitable, unavoidable and ready to welcome it as opportunity. In the end the harmony and integrity that we seek as monks can be ours because God desires to transform all that is fractured and broken in us into something whole and beautiful. 

(--by a monk, St Joseph Abbey, 7Feb2012)           http://spencerabbey1098.blogspot.com/2012/02/transformation.html 

There is no reason to go anywhere to be a monastic. The monastery of everydayness has no boundaries, walls, claustration, or barriers. Its patron saint may well be Benedict Joseph Labre. 

We are strangers in our own house.

If you are willing to bear in peace the trial of not being pleased with yourself, you will be offering the Lord Jesus a home in your heart. It is true you will suffer,  for you will feel like a stranger in your own house. But do not fear,  for the poorer you are, the more Christ will love you.
(--Saint Thérèse of Lisieux)

Unrecognized, mostly incognito, nearly transparent, the environment itself with nothing extraneous.

Then we die.

(So it seems.)

Trappist burial.

 And earth becomes us, as we do it.

Sunday, (a) musing

Are things looking up, Robert?

Merton words, Franciscan image; perfect for Louie!

Two trappists

I learn today a friend died three days ago:

January 28, 2016: Father Robert Morhous was born in 1932 in Albany, New York (USA). He entered Spencer in 1954, made his solemn profession in 1959 and was also ordained a priest in 1959. Father was 83 years old, had been in monastic vows for 59 years and 56 years a priest when the Lord called him.

(image from Upaya Zen Center, Santa Fe NM)

Another mentor, Thomas Merton (amicus in spiritu) who was a Trappist was born 101 years ago today:

We stumble and fall constantly even when we are most enlightened. But when we are in true spiritual darkness, we do not even know that we have fallen.
(-- Thomas Merton)

“Love is our true destiny. We do not find the meaning of life by ourselves alone - we find it with another.”
(― Thomas Merton, Love and Living )

The koan Fr. Robert gave me sitting together a decade ago at the monastery where he lived has become a mantra, “Cheer up, Bill, things are only going to get worse.”

His was the first zafu I ever sat on in his retreat master’s office in early 1970s -- (“Be careful, there’s a lot of electricity still in there!")

Such cheer today!

(image from St Joseph Abbey, Spencer MA)

grateful gathering

In prison Friday morning, sitting in silence with Buddhist group, I hear, twice, from outside room, someone say, “Monks don’t speak." Then, as things are in prison, a rarified silence temporarily visits, as Yao, Saskia, Tree, Doug, Matthew, Chris, Reed, Rokie, and I entertained the visitor.

After bowing and circling walking mindfully arriving back and bowing again, we sit ready for words. And  a response to the outside-room koan spoken by patrolling koan-master arises: "monks don't speak, they are spoken through."

Later, the ping pong playfulness of dialogue moves side to side as Rokie follows blue handball from foot to foot along charcoal blankets over purple yoga mats. It is a sine-wave of perspectives rollercoastering from dammapada verses to survivalist strategies, from words written by former group member now serving time in federal prison to thoughts of anthropocene age approaching, from Jim Morrison lyric "break on through to the other side," to the humor of how to continue suffering.

If we are not long to remain here (in existence, as a human species, as particular human beings) what, someone ask, can we do now? It is suggested that, with compassion and love, as community and sangha, we can help one another to new view through death-in-life/life-in-death with grace and peace and fearlessness. And in this doula-like reverse transition, to consider and practice the possibilities of "passing on through to the other side" of which we have no evidentiary experience, except for glimpses of transformation and transcendance as fleeting as a dog's single bark heard over a wide open pasture.

There is a still and quiet shiver of sympathique that visits the zendo holding all of us as if in training to realize a new commission to be companions-interior, walkers-alongside, sitters-with, a new kind (kindness?) of counterintuitive hospice, walkers-into-life, assisting one another to see-feel touch-heal each and all we encounter toward and through the door named suffering into the open pasture of unspeaking sound in deep bow surrounding the sanctity of presence without barrier or boundary.

The shakuhachi teaches by example at end. It let's pass through what does not belong to it. Breath, temporarily diverted, released through small openings, sounding itself in a grateful gathering.

We are spoken through.

We are spoken for.

We are spoken with.

A unity of presence-silence breathing emptiness into deeper practice.

Monastics,

 being,

spoken, 

through.

nonexplication

There’s no telling.

Asked about the "greatest myth about poetry that has been perpetrated upon the readers of poetry" in an interview with the literary journal Crazy Horse in 1972, the poet Charles Simic answers, that this myth "must be the idea that a poem can be fully explicated, and in prose. I sense an immense terror behind that need. Get rid of mystery, out with complexity and imagination! A totalitarian impulse” (UC 9).(--from, Orphan of Silence: The Poetry of Charles Simic, By Goran Mijuk) https://doc.rero.ch/record/3649/files/MijukG.pdf

 Nor is anyone listening.

dancing Greek and mellow Sorn*

Each time is the first time.

Why do anything twice?

(Nikos Kazantzakis and C.S. Lewis)

* The séroni (singular sorn; the plural is sometimes given as sorns) are thin, fifteen-foot-high humanoids having coats of pale feathers and seven-fingered hands.^[b] They live in mountain caves of the high country (harandra in the speech of the eldila), though they often descend into the handramit where they raise giraffe-like livestock. They are the scholars and thinkers of Malacandra, specializing in science and abstract learning. Their technical level is high, and they design machinery, which is built by the pfifltriggi. Although they can write, they do not compose written works of history or fiction as they feel the hrossa are superior at it. Their sense of humor "seldom got beyond irony" (Chap. 18) .https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Out_of_the_Silent_Planet

no time now

All is in all.

All in is all

as if prayer is arriving at itself

In solitude, world says nothing perfectly.

Earth passing through empty space. Cat watching passing morning cars up hill down hill.

Each instant in this monastic dimension, waiting as new wood on last night's coals, breath-rest and heart-fond sitting. 

As prayer itself, with no other place to be, takes everything in, holding each in reverence, signs an ancient mudra -- in nomine patris, et filii, et spiritus sancti -- gassho, namaste, shalom, salaam -- arigato!

Fire catches.

oremus pro invicem

In this monastery

No that

In open hermitage

No closed

In everyday grace

No recompense -- nothing owed nothing owned

Sunday Evening Practice

Buddha didn't say to destroy the self.

He said there was no self.

Christ didn't say to condemn those who've done wrong.

He said they are already forgiven.

It is we humans who destroy and condemn.

Let those realizing no self and practicing mercy first come to inspire deluded views.

Responding faithfully to essential goodness; engaging completely causes and conditions.

No

One there

Merciful

Absolution 

Only

salve; parasamgate; ¡Hola!

Monks chant for same reason full moon glows on frozen snow.

antiphonal

Vigils

Ant. Let us listen to the voice of God, let us enter into his rest.

Shabbos 

clear signals, look for them

A tall inmate in prison this morning said that freedom is exchanged for security.

Leads me to think that insecurity is a better chance for freedom.

Tonight an ex-inmate visits hermitage. He’s just completed his MFA Degree, will be married within the month, and is delivering a lecture at his former place of incarceration. He teaches poetry, works for justice, and advocates for inmates.

No security, only hope.

Those looking for security in the midst of radical change become easy pickings for those trying to benefit from the roaring troubles of this world. Those who believe that life should be predictable or that their security should be guaranteed wind up caught in the teeth of blind anger or debilitating fear. As an Irish poet once said, “ A false sense of security is the only kind there is.” 

(--THE BLOG, GO TOWARD THE ROAR, 08/19/2011 08:37 AM ET | UPDATED OCT 19, 2011, MICHAEL MEADE, D.H.L., FOUNDER, MOSAIC MULTICULTURAL FOUNDATION)
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-meade-dhl/facing-your-fears_b_928300.html

We ended tonight’s conversation listening to William Stafford’s poem,

A Ritual to Read to Each Other
                                     BY WILLIAM E. STAFFORD 

If you don't know the kind of person I am
and I don't know the kind of person you are
a pattern that others made may prevail in the
           world
and following the wrong god home we may miss
           our star. 

For there is many a small betrayal in the mind,
a shrug that lets the fragile sequence break
sending with shouts the horrible errors of
          childhood
storming out to play through the broken dike. 

And as elephants parade holding each
          elephant's tail,
but if one wanders the circus won't find the
          park,
I call it cruel and maybe the root of all cruelty
to know what occurs but not recognize the fact. 

And so I appeal to a voice, to something
         shadowy,
a remote important region in all who talk:
though we could fool each other, we should
         consider—
lest the parade of our mutual life get lost in the
dark. 

For it is important that awake people be awake,
or a breaking line may discourage them back to
          sleep;
the signals we give — yes or no, or maybe —
should be clear: the darkness around us is deep.

(--William Stafford, “A Ritual to Read to Each Other” from The Way It Is: New and Selected Poems. 1998 by Graywolf Press.)

errant errand

In the dream I am living another chance as, it seems, administrator of large and diversified agency school for what now seems to me to be for a population needing to be somewhere for the time being.

My basketball rolls away. My bicycle has no battery nor gearshift. I sit at an executive desk in an office being asked if I'll be attending the festival with the several oral history, literary presentations. I look around room. It is large and I feel like a reincarnated wraith of self, oh no, about to repeat the death scene of Hamlet or Hemingway novel.

I try to find friend and kindly mentor -- for what -- to resign? To not take job? To turn right on Pennsylvania turnpike, turn left on Jersey turnpike, head northeast until the corner edge of US land, look at North Atlantic and, do what, wonder?

Yeah, wonder.

I suspect there's nothing else I'm qualified to do. Just non-controlled, seemingly unrelated, arisings of the moment fleetingly seen, suddenly felt and -- wondered about.

Perhaps this world belongs to the organized, the motivated, the skillful. I have no mailbox there. (In the dream I find messages and mail in top right cubby hole that had been squirreled there for a long time.)

Wander, wonder, you itinerant mendicant! Notice, feel, and move through. I don't know what this place is, what this dream is, but it is not a fixed place, not for you.

It is a broken place. And you are no fixer. You are the broken wandering off in a wooded path. You are retreating tide in narrow harbor off to join the swirling recollections of an evolving uncertainty.

Old age, shattered understanding, disconsolate ambition.

Orphan emptiness masquerading as clown vagabond replete with red nose and bowler hat by scratching fire hole making do with little or nothing.

But wonder.

And impertinence.

Word-impoverished.

Idiorhythmic fool on errant errand.

Home is with you

What?

(No use pretending some voice is calling out to me.)

What?

(There it isn't again.)

Who's there?

(It's a ritual, like liturgical movements, this trying to identify what isn't there.)

Et cum spiritu tuo.

echo

Ok

Someone we know is suffering. Nowhere she turns does she see a way through. What can be done?

The fragile circumference of unknowing.

Maybe, as the zen master says, only don't know. Go straight. See what emerges.

With attentive presence and loving awareness listening to the situation and acting with clear and empty engagement toward the wellbeing of the one in midst of the many.

The echo:

(As in -- it's all in the details.)
By misemphasizing 'as in' the world has been plagued by 'a sin.'
Learning how to pause and where to break is a delicate learning. 

(As in -- it's all in the details.)
By misemphasizing 'as in' the world has been plagued by 'a sin.'
Learning how to pause and where to break is a delicate learning.

details

Data

Experience

Thought 

Analysis

Imagination

Liberation

Sympathique

(As in -- it's all in the details.)

By misemphasizing 'as in' the world has been plagued by 'a sin.'

Learning how to pause and where to break is a delicate learning.

pan. en. theism/anthropos

Correspondingly, it might be said God is in everything and everything is in God.

After saying this, one might add, so what? 

I'll tell you what: if such a formulation is indicative of a reality worth our attention, we might find ourselves inside God, or God inside us.

And where this possibility exists, then chocolate donuts, diabetes, and cervical cancer are merely chocolate donuts, diabetes, and cervical cancer.

Have I made myself clear?

Hello?

Anyone?

(Scheiße!)

panécastique

Revisiting Ranciere and Jacotot.

[Joseph Jacotot’s] emancipatory or panecastic (French: panécastique “everything in each” from Greek πᾶν and ἕκαστον) method was not only adopted in several institutions in Belgium, but also met with some approval in France, England, Germany, and Russia. It was based on four principles:

1. all men have equal intelligence;
2. every man has received from God the faculty of being able to instruct himself;
3. we can teach what we don't know; 
4. everything is in everything.

Regarding the first principle, he maintained that it is only in the will to use their intelligence that men differ.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Jacotot

Will.

To use.

Intelligence. 

bernie glassman resting, wife says, after stroke

a haiku dialogue:

...

“Other times 

he subsides into 

a tired silence,” (-EM)

...

at this time

revive out to

restful sound (-bh)

...

We listen, and watch, revered attention, for you both!

http://www.tricycle.com/blog/roshi-bernie-glassman-suffers-stroke

Om shanti

Seekers of God

Follow no path

For no will re-mind you

To yes here and there

(wfh)

With apologies and gratitude to 

e e cummings:

http://poems.writers-network.com/ee_cummings/seeker-of-truth.html

don't and don't

The war that is going on is not just Iraq and Afghanistan. No, more than that.

And it's not just good versus evil. Our christian and muslim friends don't own the patent.

So, what is the war?

Damned if I know.

If I knew I'd share what I knew.

I don't so I don't.

It's just us. And we don't know.

So, we look through silence as one might pray if they knew how to pray and what to pray for.

We don't and don't.

five word glimpse

Everything is as I am.

I know nothing of supernatural powers

I put old brown cover from grocery market bag on book by Daniel Berrigan.

Then find Maurin quote.

Chesterton says:
"The Christian ideal
has not been tried
and found wanting.
It has been found difficult
and left untried."
Christianity has not been tried
because people thought
it was impractical.
And men have tried everything
except Christianity.
And everything
that men have tried
has failed. 

~Peter Maurin

Then find one of Berrigan’s poems.

Zen Poem

How I long for supernatural powers! 

said the novice mornfully to the holy one. 

I see a dead child 

and I long to say, Arise!

 I see a sick man 

I long to say, Be healed!

 I see a bent old woman 

I long to say, Walk straight! 

Alas, I feel like a dead stick in paradise. 

Master, can you confer on me 

supernatural powers?

The old man shook his head fretfully
How long have I been with you
and you know nothing?
How long have you known me
and learned nothing?
Listen; I have walked the earth for 80 years
I have never raised a dead child
I have never healed a sick man
I have never straightened an old woman's spine

Children die
men grow sick
the aged fall
under a stigma of frost

And what is that to you or me
but the turn of the wheel
but the way of the world
but the gateway to paradise?

Supernatural powers!
Then you would play God
would spin the thread of life and measure the thread
5 years, 50 years, 80 years
and cut the thread?

Supernatural powers!
I have wandered the earth for 80 years
I confess to you,
sprout without root
root without flower
I know nothing of supernatural powers
I have yet to perfect my natural powers!

to see and not be seduced
to hear and not be deafened
to taste and not be eaten
to touch and not be bought

But you-
would you walk on water
would you master the air
would you swallow fire?

Go talk with the dolphins
they will teach you glibly
how to grow gills

Go listen to eagles
they will hatch you, nest you
eaglet and airman

Go join the circus
those tricksters will train you
in deception for dimes-

Bird man, bag man, poor fish
spouting fire, moon crawling
at sea forever-
supernatural powers!

Do you seek miracles?
listen- go
draw water, hew wood
break stones-
how miraculous!

Listen; blessed is the one
who walks the earth 5 year, 50 years, 80 years
and deceives no one
and curses no one
and kills no one

On such a one
the angels whisper in wonder,
behold the irresistible power
of natural powers-
of height, of joy, of soul, of non belittling!

You dry stick-
in the crude soil of this world
spring, root, leaf, flower!

trace
around and around
and around-
an inch, a mile, the world's green extent,-
a liberated zone

of paradise!

(Poem by Dan Berrigan, in And the Risen Bread: Selected Poems, 1957-1997,  By Daniel Berrigan, John Dear)

Exhale

Four bells

Silence

Hereafter 

space/time, continuum

As it was

In the beginning

Is now

And ever shall be --

World --

Without

End(s)

(go ahead, look at this, your original face,

the one you had before your mother and father were born, is this present moment)

gotta love this attitude

"The Cynic is the Tyrant's Best Friend" Ken O'Keefe 
Video

"Far too long we've been taught that we cannot do anything, that this is the way life and the world has always been. That's a load of non-sense."

We are infinite souls with the capacity for great resilience, love and empathy. There is nothing more heroic than being able to empower one another in the fight against tyranny. We stand united, ready to face what we must to end wars.

Posted January 09, 2015

“Humanity’s challenge at this decisive point in history is to face a monster that is desperately attempting to expand it’s tyrannical system of human enslavement. Simultaneously human consciousness is growing with unparalleled expansion and this is a grave threat to the tyrants. Only one of these forces, humanity or tyranny, can succeed and the world we handover to our children and future generations will be defined by our success or failure in this regard. The irony is that the tyrants have no power but that which we have unwittingly relinquished to them… in order to create a better world owe simply need to take our power back. That is my ultimate goal; a better world. My wisdom in this matter comes from the knowledge that the attainment of this goal is not up to me, it is up to us.”

Ken O'Keefe, Nov. 2015

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article43895.htm

switching, and listening to Frankie from Sydney NS

Synapses.

junction between two nerve cells," 1899, from Gk. synapsis "conjunction," from synaptein "to clasp," from syn- "together" + haptein "to fasten." Related to apse. Introduced by Eng. physiologist Sir Michael Foster (1836-1907) at the suggestion of Eng. classical scholar Arthur Woollgar Verral (1851-1912). (--dictionary.com)

The buddhist teacher said we could let it through, let it be, and let it go.

Instead of blocking and fighting it off, pushing it away, or holding fast to it.

Thoughts.

Feelings.

Life.

http://hashtagmaine.bangordailynews.com/2016/01/11/youtube/canadas-emphatic-weatherman-is-back-with-another-dire-warning-for-mainers/

nothing of their own

Yesterday, Jan.10th, according to the church calendar at foot of stairs, was the celebration of The Baptism of Christ.

Words alongside Joachim Patinir’s painting of the same, are:

“Baptism is God’s most beautiful and magnificent gift... We call it grace, anointing, enlightenment, garment of immortality, bath of rebirth, seal, and most precious gift -- it is conferred on those who bring nothing of their own.” (--St Gregory of Nazianzus, Archbishop of Constantinople, Oratio 40 {D 390})

The religious metaphor still has vibrance. Especially to those who bring nothing of their own.

It is crucial that we understand the importance of incarnation. This became so clear to me in a chance encounter with a recluse near the Abbey of Our Lady of Gethsemani in Kentucky, when I did a retreat at Thomas Merton’s hermitage in 1985. A recluse is a hermit’s hermit. Recluses come into the community only for Christmas and Easter. The rest of the time, they stay in the forest alone with God and themselves. 

I was walking down a little trail when I saw this recluse coming toward me. Not wanting to interfere, I bowed my head and moved to the side of the path, intending to walk past him. But as we neared each other, he said, “Richard!” That surprised me. He was supposed to be a recluse. How did he know I was there? Or who I was? 

He said, “Richard, you get chances to preach and I don’t. When you’re preaching, just tell the people one thing: God is not ‘out there’! God bless you.” And he abruptly continued down the path. Now I have just told you what he ordered me to do. God is not out there! 

The belief that God is “out there” is the basic dualism that is tearing us all apart. Our view of God as separate and distant has harmed our understandings of our sexuality; of our relationship to food, possessions, and money; and of our relationship to animals, nature, and our own incarnate selves. This loss is foundational as to why we live such distraught and divided lives. Jesus came precisely to put it all together for us and in us. He was saying, in effect, “To be human is good! The material and the physical can be trusted and enjoyed. This world is the hiding place of God and the revelation of God!” 

(--from, God Is Not “Out There”, Sunday, January 10, 2016, Richard Rohr)  https://cac.org/god-is-not-out-there-2016-01-10/

Perhaps the difficulty we experience with the idea of God is one of perspective. Where are we looking? And who is looking? And why. At what?

Is our interest in God the same as our interest in ourselves? And would it make any difference if we came to settle on the simple fact of life as the simple fact of God?

Are we looking for life? Are we looking for self?

Not out there.

In here.

Residing within God.

Owning everything by owning nothing.

a notable and contemplative valediction, received yesterday

Best wishes for abundant experience of the Love that protects us from nothing and sustains us in everything. 

(-sb)

ehi passiko

When contempt begins to fade there appears a sense of undivided mess. (I leave that correction by autocorrection; I intended 'undividedness.')

Perhaps because of our Judeo-Christian background, we have a tendency to regard doubt as something shameful, almost as an enemy. We feel that if we have doubts, it means that we are denying the teachings and that we should really have unquestioning faith. Now in certain religions, unquestioning faith is considered a desirable quality. But in the Buddha-dharma, this is not necessarily so. Referring to the dharma, the Buddha said, “ehi passiko,” which means “come and see,” or “come and investigate,” not “come and believe.” An open, questioning mind is not regarded as a drawback to followers of the Buddha-dharma. However, a mind that says, “This is not part of my mental framework, therefore I don’t believe it,” is a closed mind, and such an attitude is a great disadvantage for those who aspire to follow any spiritual path. But an open mind, which questions and doesn’t accept things simply because they are said, is no problem at all.

A famous sutra tells of a group of villagers who came to visit the Buddha. They said to him, “Many teachers come through here. Each has his own doctrine. Each claims that his particular philosophy and practice is the truth, but they all contradict each other. Now we’re totally confused. What do we do?” Doesn’t this story sound modern? Yet this was twenty-five hundred years ago. Same problems. The Buddha replied, “You have a right to be confused. This is a confusing situation. Do not take anything on trust merely because it has passed down through tradition, or because your teachers say it, or because your elders have taught you, or because it’s written in some famous scripture. When you have seen it and experienced it for yourself to be right and true, then you can accept it.”

(--from, Necessary Doubt, byAni Tenzin Palmo, tricycle), http://www.tricycle.com/feature/necessary-doubt?utm_source=Tricycle&utm_campaign=f5e8a97cc3-Daily_Dharma_January_10_201601_10_2016&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1641abe55e-f5e8a97cc3-307306085

Perhaps mess is what we must adjust to.

I worry about clean, clear, controlled environment and polis. (I worry, and yet find them compelling.)

My worry is doubt come visiting.

At Saturday Morning Practice we listened to Ṭhānissaro Bhikkhu, I'd been sitting on seiza bench following thoughts about suffering and presence. I wondered if presence was the vital metaphor of what we call God, what would be the opposite of presence?

It occurred to me the opposite of presence is presence without awareness.

Then listening to the Bhikkhu (monk) he used the phrase ‘appropriate attention.’ That seemed to fit -- the opposite of presence is presence without appropriate attention.

Perhaps that's why we so easily are deceived thinking we are present when we are not.

Investigate this.

See this.

A good practice!

above and beyond yes and no

Yes

above all

mercy

knows no

bounds;

no

knows

mercy,

all, above

Yes

what makes us grateful

There were 10 of us for Buddhist practice and meetingbrook conversation in prison this morning.

There were 5 of us attending the needs of a woman in the emergency department of an Augusta hospital this afternoon and evening.

There are two of us returning tired to the hermitage.

A white dog climbs stairs.

God remains a mystery.

This makes us grateful.

absurd times absurd is absurd squared

Listening to information about TPP, WTO, and NAFTA I'm convinced that the age of Governments is over and the world of Corporations has replaced them.

Here's how it works: people elect politicians, they then make laws benefitting corporations, then they resign and work for the corporations, being paid with the money they funneled to themselves.

Real people are diminished and Corporations are now virtual people. 

People are deemed idiots not to see the absurd way things operate in this absurd world.

fellow volunteer, friend from prison Buddhist/conversation group, sends Rumi, perfect

                                ONLY BREATH

Not Christian, or Jew or Muslim, not Hindu

Buddhist, sufi or zen. Not any religion.

or cultural system. I am not from the East

or the West, not out of the ocean or up

from the ground, not natural or ethereal, not

composed of elements at all. I do not exist

am not an entity in this world or next.

did not descend from Adam and Eve or any

origin story. My place is placeless, a trace

of the traceless. Neither body or soul.

I belong to the beloved, have seen the two

worlds as one and that one call to and know,

first, last, outer, inner only that

breath breathing human being. 

(--Rumi, An Excerpt from the translations of Coleman Barks)

philosophy of education

Learn for yourself what is your passion.

Learn for others what they need you to know for you to do their work.

Learn for the situation what it wants to teach you.

Lernen lassen, workliche.

stoking wood stove, haiku

2 degrees with wind

house draws itself in, prayer

finds its way through dark

Pass me, poetry, please

I'm a better Catholic because I'm Buddhist.

I'm a better Buddhist because I'm Christian.

As an agnostic, I'm a better human.

In another exchange, Fr. Thomas Keating, one of the founders of the Centering Prayer movement, whose purpose is to renew the Christian mystical tradition, asked: "..when one has shed this ego-centeredness with its aggression and selfish self-seeking, is there not still an identity left, which may actually be very good?" 

The Tibetan monk Trungpa Rinpoche responded: "Well, I think now we have reached the key point. Egolessness means that there is no ego –at all." 

Fr. Keating: "That’s what I thought it meant…" 

Trungpa Rinpoche: "Union with God cannot take place when there is any form of ego. Any whatsoever. In order to be one with God, one has to become formless. Then you will see God." 

Fr. Keating: "This is the point I was trying to make for Christians by quoting the agonizing words of Christ on the cross. He cried out, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" (Mark 15:34) It seems that his sense of personal relationship with God, as God’s son, had disappeared. Many interpreters say that this was only a temporary experience. But I am inclined to think, in light of the Buddhist description of no-self, that he was passing into a stage beyond the personal self, however holy and beautiful that self had been. That final stage would then also have to be defined as the primary Christian experience. Christ has called us Christians not just so that so that we will accept him as savior, but so that we will follow the same process that brought him to his final stage of consciousness." 126 

CHRISTIANITY IN THE CRUCIBLE OF EAST-WEST DIALOGUE: A Critical Look at Catholic Participation By James Arraj Originally published by Inner Growth Books, LLC, 2001 ISBN: 0-914073-03-6 (paperback edition) and GOD, ZEN AND THE INTUITION OF BEING By James Arraj Originally published by Inner Growth Books, LLC, 1988 ISBN: 0-914073-20-6 (paperback edition) Copyright James Arraj.Loc 825, kindle)

Thay, it is said, cannot speak

This suggests a rethinking of that --

Calligraphy by Thich Nhat Hanh

a lone pre sent,

silence

re

cords

everything

snug

ly

as a 

whole

with

a bow

in pass

ing

haiku

The old man

cannot think of any

reason to die

at poetry yesterday in quarry hill, Ted read his poem about Bach played in Winchester Cathedral

Change

And everything changes

Night turning toward twilight

Sky showing moon, planets, stars and silence

Perhaps what we call God is longing for God, longing of God for us, longing of what we call creation for God with us

Thomas Merton's definition of contemplation as prayer "centered entirely on the presence of God." 

Clarity

Compassion

Creativity

Abiding kindness

Light below surface

To be seen

everything becomes enchanting with true sight

Yes.

To everything.

The Christian vision is that the world is a temple. If that is true, then our enemies are sacred, too. Who else created them but God? The ability to respect the outsider is probably the litmus test of true seeing. And it doesn't stop with human beings and enemies and the least of the brothers and sisters. It moves to frogs and pansies and weeds. Everything becomes enchanting with true sight. One God, one world, one truth, one suffering, and one love. All we can do is participate. I hope you enter the New Year with this awareness and an intention to join in with all your heart, mind, and body! 

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Perhaps the "image of God" is the form, semblance, appearance that we blithely call the world, or existence, or this reality.

We are created into this reality.

We come into the image of God yet do not comprehend what we are where we are.

We stand and sit and have our being within the standing and sitting and being of God. There is nothing other. This is what is, in place, in time, in imagination.

This world, however we understand it in perspectival, referential mode of calculation, is an appearance for contemplation.

Contemplation -- Imago Dei -- awareness activated.

Do I see? Do you see?

Do we see one, another?

If you woke from sleep this morning, you are the active contemplation of God locating Itself right where you are, I am.

There must be some egg nog in the fridge, don't you think?

William Carlos Williams said it for us

–Say it, no ideas but in things–
nothing but the blank faces of the houses
and cylindrical trees
bent, forked by preconception and accident–
split, furrowed, creased, mottled, stained–
secret–into the body of the light! 

(--from, Paterson: Book I, William Carlos Williams)

that covers it

Haiku, by Chogo

I long for people --
Then again I loath them:
End of autumn.

Hito koi she  / hito mutsukashishi  / aki no kure 

(--death poem, by Chogo, died 3sept1806, age 45; in Japanese Death Poems, c.1986, Charles E Tuttle Company, p.153)

da sein, kein ende

The year, you say, is ending? 

No. 

Thursday will become Friday just as you and I become you and I. 

There being no end. 

Just becoming itself.

after stacking 3 cord of wood in 19 degree cold before first snowstorm

There is no one place.

Mind as Water, Mind as Ice
The Right Mind is the mind that does not remain in one place. It is the mind that stretches throughout the entire body and self. The Confused Mind is the mind that, thinking something over, congeals in one place.
(—Takuan Soho, "The Right Mind and the Confused Mind")

Find yourself there wherever you lose yourself.

No place to rest your head.

Mind has no rest.

It has only what it sees wherever it finds itself.

Itself -- such as it is.

Such, and nothing else.

the poem begins inside the imagined arrival looking back to the idea of starting out

Followers of the poor man from Assisi seem to point to a way back home that seems worth traveling:

We have heard this phrase so often that we don't get the existential shock of what "created in the image and likeness of God" is saying about us. If we could believe it, we would save ourselves ten thousand dollars in therapy! If this is true--and I believe it is--our family of origin is divine. It is saying that we were created by a loving God to be love in the world. Our core is original blessing, not original sin. Our starting point is positive and, as it is written in the first chapter of the Bible, it is "very good" (Genesis 1:31). We do have a good place to go home. If the beginning is right, the rest is made considerably easier, because we know and can trust the clear direction of our life's tangent.  

 The great illusion we must all overcome is the illusion of separateness. It is the primary task of religion to communicate not worthiness but union, to reconnect people to their original identity "hidden with Christ in God" (Colossians 3:3). The Bible calls this state of separateness "sin." God's job description is to draw us back into this primal and intimate relationship. "My dear people, we are already children of God; what we will be in the future has not yet been fully revealed, and all I do know is that we shall be like God" (1 John 3:2).

(--Richard Rohr OFM)  http://campaign.r20.constantcontact.com/render?ca=2a176d2f-7dd7-4ad8-9c30-9945fe81e555&c=4d6fbfb0-7972-11e5-9400-d4ae529ce120&ch=4d742c80-7972-11e5-9400-d4ae529ce120

It's not what "I" have to reveal, but what "it" has to reveal.

The road reveals.

Each one step after another.

The intimate relationship.

MR. MULDOON: At least they weren’t speaking French 

when my father sat with his brothers and sisters, two of each, on a ramshackle bench 

at the end of a lane marked by two white stonesand made mouth music as they waited, chilled to the bone 

Fol-de-rol, fol-de-rol, fol-de-rol-di-oh 

for the bus meant to bring their parents back from town. 

It came and went. Nothing. One sister was weighed down 

By the youngest child. A grocery bag from a town more distant still, in troth.What started as a cough 

Fol-de-rol, fol-de-rol, fol-de-rol-di-oh 

would briefly push him forward to some minor renown 

then shove him back, oddly summery, down 

along the trench 

to that far-flung realm where, at least, they weren’t speaking French. 

(--from poem by Paul Muldoon, "At least they weren't speaking  French", from transcript to "on being" with Krista Tippet)  http://www.onbeing.org/program/paul-muldoon-a-conversation-with-verse/transcript/8282

It rains in Maine this morning. We've gotten through Christmas -- the culture of creating a dimension unseen but in fantasmic making -- time without appearance.

The way we see one another in heartbreaking appreciation.

When the World Says Hello

Imagine for a moment that everything you see, hear, smell, touch, and taste is your very best friend. The spoon in your hand and the distant sound of traffic; the raindrops running down your back and the smell of dirty laundry; the blue sky and the flavor of cumin—these are not mere passing encounters with two-dimensional items. Instead, imagine for a moment that everything you are experiencing is your very, very best friend saying hello.

—Michael Carroll, "Gently Bowing"